60 seconds in the maxi clock at ADI Design Museum

18/02/2022

One hundred thirteen minutes for 113 corporate museums and archives. From February 15th, the enterprise cultural heritage is a matter of time at the ADI Design Museum. A maxi digital clock has been placed at the entrance of the city’s temple of design to illustrate over a hundred cultural institutions across Italy. Each one of these is unveiled through an iconic image. Entitled #unmuseoalminuto – which means “one museum per minute” – this permanent installation was designed by Neo and conceived by Museimpresa and Assolombarda.

Among the museums and archives peeping out of the clock’s face, there’s also Fondazione Dompé. Every 113 minutes, the movement of the second-hand draws a dreamlike image, where a few objects with an unclear correlation stand out against a black background: a hand, several spheres, a dancer, and a bottle. Guess what it is?

A historical Dompé’s drug advertisement, signed by Franco Grignani. This all-around artist, whose work is still explored in design schools today, had become in the early 50s a key collaborator of Dompé Farmaceutici founder, whose first name, funnily enough, was also Franco.

“With its rhythmic time scanning, the pendulum”- explain the promotors of this project - “symbolically represents the past, present, and future. It also illustrates the companies’ ability to treasure their history, live in the present, and be forward-thinking.” These topics are all dear to Fondazione Dompé, whose commitment swings, just like a pendulum, from the past to the future, from treasuring its roots to investing in the progress of scientific knowledge.

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