È del museo il fin la meraviglia

This study overviews some of the key issues in contemporary anthropology applied to museum studies, regarding in particular the public's interpretation and new role. The discussion of these (at times paradoxical) issues opens with a few considerations on the Guatelli Museum (reviewed by F. Zeri and P. Clemente in a radio programme of the Piccoli Musei series) and on how the obvious can be rescued from its banality through an extra-ordinary framework. The author goes on to analyse a collection of P. Clemente's essays and attempts to explain why the Guatelli Museum drew the author away from his training in the Cirese tradition and brought him to put forward a new theory of museum planning.