Industrial design museums: innovations in contents and strategies

Often hidden by the widespread well-known traditional works of art such as paintings and sculptures, applied arts are now target of collecting and exhibiting. Most of all, design seems to have assumed the dignity of thematic shows and museums of design are now opening all over the world. Design Museums exhibit collections of famous designers, stylists and firms. The supply chain of brands could find a show in the Museum Rooms. Industrial Museums pre-exist to Design Museums, representing the natural location of the history of supply chains. Both, Design and Industrial Museums are attracting new visitors, who appreciate applied arts and would like to experience a “creative visiting”. There is a huge variety of Industrial Museums in Europe and in Italy. There are museums owned by the firms themselves; others are managed by foundations or associations. There are museums that highlight their building’s architecture, creating or re-thinking a Landmark (Negri M., 2005), while others show their collection in a simple office. These Museums’ communication and fundraising strategies, networking and partnership policies are changing and they are getting on with own standards (Hausmann A., 2007; Bourgeon-Renault D., Gombault A., 2005; Beverly Thompson J., 2005; Lidstrom B., 2004; Preece S. B., 2004). The aim of the paper is the investigation of strategies of Industrial Museums and Museums of Applied Arts and Design. How do they transform industrial concepts in museum concepts and manage them? What about their marketing, fundraising, teaching and merchandising? What their use of Internet and e-marketing? The analysis will be focused on European and Italian Museums. In the first paragraph it will be introduced the concept of design, Museum of design and the meaningfulness of marketing in this museum. In the second paragraph there will be an analysis of industrial museums, of typical Italian Made in and brands. In the third paragraph there will be an analysis of the Triennale Foundation, the most famous Design Museum nowadays in Italy, in the fourth paragraph, web potentials of European and Italian design museums will be compared with cluster analysis.