Musee des Arts Modestes

The International Museum of Modest Art is located in an  old restored warehouse. It was established by Herve Di Rosa in 1990.

Modest art revels in its simplicity and claims to liberate the artistic process from stifling intellectualism.

The curators collect various everyday objects and create artistic displays by placing them in unusual contexts.

Modest art aims to stimulate interest in ordinary everyday items by manipulating and combining them in bizarre and thought-provoking ways. Thus an object which might normally be regarded as cheap or in bad taste can acquire a completely new aesthetic value through being shown in a different context.

The collection contains thousand of discarded souvenirs, bric-a-brac and children's toys which are arranged in caravans, glass cases and containers. The once banal possessions of our everyday lives, particularly of our childhood, are thus intended to prompt reflection upon our own culture and identity.

In particular we are invited to recapture a sense of our lost innocence by remembering how impressed we used to be with interesting yet entirely worthless objects.

This theme is continued in the garden, designed by Liliana Motta, which attempts to achieve the same effect through the arrangement of plants and objects in abandoned spaces.

The museum has hosted several exhibitions of unusual items such as a collection of the Ghanaian movie posters (2002), a retrospective of thought-provoking pictures by the former Veronese psychiatric patient, Carlo Zinelli (2004) and a vast array of Elvis Presely memorabilia (2001).

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