Alpinart Exhibition Centre
The Alpinart Exhibition Centre was inaugurated in July 2008; it is in Cogne at the Villaggio Minatori. In its three halls, it holds displays and exhibitions dedicated to Alpine culture.
CLOTHES display
Until 31 December 2008 Alpinart is holding the exhibition CLOTHES—ACCOUNTS OF CLOTHES THAT ARE A LIVING PART OF THE VALLE D’AOSTA TRADITION, provided by the Education and Culture Department of the Valle d’Aosta Autonomous Region, through the BREL (Regional Ethnology and Linguistics Office). The display represents a cultural event of extraordinary importance for the Valle d’Aosta: for the first time, in fact, the whole collection of traditional clothes and jewellery, collected throughout the regional territory at the end of the 19th century, on the occasion of the 1911 International Exhibition, held to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Unification of Italy and to celebrate the “Italic peoples”, is back home.
All this material, so far kept in Rome at the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, which is now the Central Institute for Demographic and Ethnographic Anthropology, has been carefully analysed by experts, in far-reaching work that has made it possible to unveil a rich and varied collection, and highlight the lively and multiform ferment of demographic and ethnographic anthropology of the period between the late 19th century and the early 20th century—into which the Valle d’Aosta ethnography fits at the critical moment of its birth.
Clothes, better than any other manufactured item, represent people’s identity and their sense of belonging to their social position and their land. For this very reason the Clothes Display has the fundamental scope of bringing back to us a picture of that world—not a stereotyped picture, but one that is real and significant—through analysis of costumes and their very rich and variegated lexicon, connected with the choice of style, colours, and symbolic ornaments. The suggested way round the display guides the visitor to discover all those elements that make clothes truly an “open book” on the history and culture of a people.
The Cogne Display is divided up into several sections, which highlight different aspects of the research. Jewellery: this is mostly about crosses made of silver, or metals similar to gold, hung in strips on velvet, that are generally speaking a gift from a husband to his future wife, but that also have a magical-propitious function—they protect from harm (the cross), and attract wellbeing and happiness (the heart).
Bonnets are an essential element of female attire, but they are also a garment that identifies a community, and are admired for the richness and workmanship of their decoration: their silk crowns are covered with gold or silver lace, with coloured semi-precious stones or glass cameos. By their refinement, these represent the social status of the family. Straw hats, for centuries forbidden to women by sumptuary laws, as they were considered to be a male accessory, become in the nineteenth century an indispensable head covering for ladies and common womenfolk. Red Clothes: in the Valle d’Aosta clothes of this colour, because of the magical-propitious properties attributed to them, were worn by men on their wedding day, on great occasions, and on feast days. The abandonment of these traditional clothes is looked upon with displeasure at the end of the nineteenth century by Amé Gorret, a mountain-climbing priest.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with the same name, edited by PRIULI & VERLUCCA, in which researchers of various disciplines have collaborated: it is a text providing further study that gives a complete panorama of the subject, accompanied by a rich iconographic apparatus.