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Newly Appointed Madre Director Eugenio Viola Sees the Museum as a Living Archive

He sees the works made for Palazzo Donnaregina as a living archive, to be reinterpreted regularly through changing displays and contemporary commissions.

Last month, the Madre Museum in Naples named Eugenio Viola its new director. Viola, a Naples native, was chosen from a field of 33 candidates and returns to the museum where he served as curator at large from 2009 to 2016. Housed in the Palazzo Donnaregina, the institution holds a collection of works conceived specifically for the building, tying it to the city since it opened. We caught up with the director to hear about his plans for the collection, why the Mediterranean will anchor his program and where he eats in Naples.

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Congratulations on the new job! You were curator at large at the Madre from 2009 to 2016, and you’ve said your institutional career took its first steps there. What does walking back into that building feel like after a decade abroad?

It carries a particular emotional weight. Madre is where a fundamental part of my professional identity took shape, and where I learned to see a museum not simply as an exhibition space, but as a living structure of ideas, relationships and conversations.

I am returning to a place I know intimately, but inevitably with different eyes after a decade spent working across Australia and Latin America. I do not see it as closing a circle. Quite the opposite: it is the beginning of another trajectory.

After so many years abroad, I felt a desire to bring what I had learned back into dialogue with the city that shaped me. There is an element of giving something back, certainly, but I am not interested in nostalgia. I am interested in what can happen next.

What are the main differences between working with institutions in Latin America and Italy?

I would resist a simple binary. Institutions are shaped by the societies in which they operate, and their priorities emerge from those conditions.

In many Latin American contexts, museums are asked to fill gaps elsewhere in the public sphere. They become spaces of encounter, listening and coexistence, often responding directly to moments of social or political crisis. They also tend to work with very limited resources. That scarcity can generate extraordinary inventiveness, but also a necessary culture of solidarity: institutions share knowledge, networks, infrastructure and responsibilities.

Italy has a much denser institutional history, a strong public cultural infrastructure and an extraordinary concentration of heritage and expertise. This provides continuity,........

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