The museum system The project Handicrafts museums is aimed at spreading and making the importance of handicrafts more

known. The structure of this project is shaped in a sort of net, or system, which allows information and best practices to be shared. The goal of this project is the creation of a handicrafts museum system promoted and coordinated by Confartigianato. The territorial organisations of Confartigianato will be the operating tools that will play a key role in collecting and linking together the different requests from the museums and businesses located on the area. A deep cooperation between representatives of the museum net and the business world is therefore essential in order to plan and realise common projects and initiatives aimed at valorising the handicrafts culture in the area. The net will therefore be a very useful source not only for the museum operators and representative organisations, but for everyone (from private citizens to experts) who shows an interest in knowing better the nature and features of the world of handicraft. A web forum has been created in order to allow everyone to contribute to this project expressing different points of view and opinions (see the forum section). Antonio Pasqualino International puppets museum Type of museum: private museum Category: Puppets Annual number of visitors: 15.000 Items: Sicilian puppets, glove puppets, marionettes, shadow puppets, stage equipments, posters, curtains. Opening times: Mo-Fr, 09:00-13:00 and 16:00-19:00. Guided tours available in Italian and other languages. Admission: Adult: 3 euro, reduced ticket: 1,50 euro (children and groups).

Additional facilities: library, bookshop, souvenir shop, temporary exhibition area, meeting room. Informative material: brochures and catalogues. Address: via Butera 1- 90133 Palermo City/province: Palermo/PA Telephone number: 091/328060 Website: www.museomarionettepalermo.it e-mail: mimap@museomarionettepalermo.it Contact person: Marianne Vibalek (Chief executive)

Museum description Founded in 1975 by Associazione per la conservazione delle tradizioni popolari (association for the safeguarding of folk traditions), the Antonio Pasqualino international puppets museum has always derived its inspiration from the principles of modern museography and theatrical performances which made it one of the best examples of theatre museographic research. The museum contains 3500 items from all over the world; the Giuseppe Leggio library, attached to the museum, owns about 3000 books on figure theatre and folk traditions. The museum shows a very rich collection of Sicilian puppets, glove puppets, marionettes and stage equipments from many European countries and the East. One of the halls is devoted to a collection of items from the Trapani, Catania and Palermitan areas. Other collections of significant artistic value and interest are located in another hall which contains Vietnamese puppets, Greek shadows (Karaghiozis), and the very charming Turkish shadows (Karagz) made of wood and parchment, shadows and puppets designed by famous contemporary artists such as Guttuso, Enrico Baj and Kantor. The puppets and marionettes can be used to perform shows by request.

A monothematic library and a video library devoted to Sicilian (but not only) folk traditions are attached to the museum. It is therefore clear why the puppets museum is one of the best examples of theatre research inside the context of a real museum. Aiming at promoting this kind of theatre together with the traditions linked to it, the association has done its best over the past twenty years to keep alive the interest for the Sicilian puppets theatre as well as for the new performance techniques and experimental theatre. Among the many promoted events, particular attention is paid on one side to the theatreperformances are both experimental and traditional as the well known Opera Dei Pupi- and on the other side to didactics: guided tours and video projections, technical-practical tutorials on the different traditions of the animation theatre, technical demonstration of how to handle puppets are organized for schools as well as teachers and school operators.