TAM - Tower Art Museum

Originally planned for 2018, TAM, a private contemporary art museum, was opened in Matera on 1 December 2022. Today, the tower in the heart of the Sassi of Matera, once abandoned, houses a permanent collection and two annual exhibitions featuring local, national and international artists. In 1993 Matera was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The founding partners of Torretta srl, who were born and raised in the Lucanian city, have experienced first-hand the risk of museification that Matera runs. The “Museo che non esiste" wants to overturn the cliché that sees the city's history often simplified: from "national embarassement" to heritage of humanity. Today more than ever, it is necessary to tell the story of a place that is alive and productive. The social enterprise wanted to open a museum so that the city would not become a museum. The project develops its cultural strategy by curating uniquely site-specific projects. In addition, Tower Art Museum also becomes a space for the production of external events such as festivals, exhibitions and workshops, and offers services for cultural design. TAM believes that the role of the museum is to create spaces of co-habitation where real policies for experiencing the city can be developed. The recent opening allows the social enterprise to give physical form to the work previously initiated by the ‘Volevo solo aprire un museo' initiative. The museum lends itself not as a witness but as an agent for communities to build a living future through the beauty that has been handed down to us.