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Artusi’s
House is the first centre of gastronomic culture dedicated to the Italian
domestic kitchen, having the function
of old (gastronomic literature of 1800
and 1900) and contemporary documentation (internet), diffusion (courses and meetings) and experimentation (Italian
resort and regional dishes and receipts realised in the laboratory and
served in the dining room ), which will see the light in Forlimpopoli, birth town of the author of the famous
receipts manual “Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well”. The
centre will be realised inside the block of the Servants’ Church, in the
historical area of Forlimpopoli, whose clearance works have been started
in October 2001. The
whole block (a convent with annexed church in the past) has a long history
starting in the Middle Age. The different buildings composing it
today are the
result of a number of transformations, often very simple, but sometimes
substantial, which had frequently
changed the aspect of the
block itself during the centuries, before with progressive enlargements,
then with radical interventions which had modified the structures of
the convent until the second half of the XIIIth century. The
structure, having a particularly historical and symbolical importance for
Forlimpopoli, perfectly fits the role of hosting the site of Artusi’s
House. From
the point of view of the space and, more in general of the architecture,
the area, even if bound and therefore not susceptible of radical
transformations, is the right
one to solve the function it will be assigned to, with its more than
2000 square meters in addition to the courtyard and the beautiful
Servants’ Church. Artusi’s
House has also got a modern and technological importance, the record,
film, book (paper and informatics) and icon libraries will all
reproduce the material
at disposition, attentively selectioned in virtue of the goal of the
Centre. An
Internet site will inform the readers about Pellegrino Artusi’s work,
offering the consultation of all the editions of
Science in the Kitchen
(the first one, dated 1981, and the following ones), The site will
open an e-mail service with
its readers, answering to gastronomic questions, receipts requests, and
information about home kitchen, reproducing, thanks to the modern
electronic technologies, the same methodology of epistolary relationship
used by Artusi to realize and enrich his receipt manual. In this way we
will create a data bank of the home Italian receipts, continuously
alimented by the readers’ contribution under a firm input : (“send us
your home receipts!”). It
is not, therefore, a static museum, but a dynamic one, with a strong
cultural identity, fully integrated with the territory and its own
products. We do not want to embalm Artusi, but to make him live
in the actual context. Inside the House you
do will find some antiques and some signs of the biographic memory
of the character, but inserted in a route
of widespread diffusion of the Italian gastronomic culture and
practice (didactic, of wide divulgation, practical, of exercise, of
restoration, of formation, of
items and events production ). All the
senses (seeing , feeling , hearing, smelling and tasting ) will be put in
exercise, even the sixth one , that is “intuition”, not less worthy in
preparing and consuming food. Artusi’s
inheritance – a man fond of
good readings, philanthropist and great
experimenter of the good practices of the domestic kitchen, world famous
for writing a book (or better, 14 editions of the same, which almost
identifies itself with the name of the author: “The Artusi”, a book present, oily and filthy, perhaps in all Italian
houses)- is in some ways inserted, by his own birth town, in a
multifunctional living and active project
. Not
without considering the strong crisis of the domestic kitchen,
it reproposes the home
kitchen as a model, not done of immutable
rules and codes but of always
reinventing and rewriting concrete practice,
experimentation and teaching.
So doing we also want to keep in mind the faithful cook
Marietta, a central figure for the work and
the fortune of Artusi, to whom for
years Forlimpopoli has
been dedicating a national
Prize reserved to non professionals. At
the same time we want to repropose the idea of the book, a book in the
kitchen, as an essential link
for the transmission of the oral tradition, too, making ourselves the
promoters of a cultural project totally innovative. In the House, the
Kitchen and the Library are the two symbolic places which running
after and interacting each other give meaning and unity
the whole. Therefore,
Artusi’s Hose is open to everybody who , fans and curious, housewives
and cooks, professionals and lovers, scholars and researchers want to
deepen the culture and the practice of the domestic kitchen.
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE OF THE CULTURAL PROJECT “Artusi’s House”
For
the Council of Forlimpopoli
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