M.U.Ro (Museo Urban di Roma)

Founded in 2010 by the artist David Diavù Vecchiato, the Museo di Urban Art di Roma (MURo) is the 'diffuse museum' of Urban Art in the city of Rome.

It is the first museum project to be completely integrated into the social fabric, like the art form it follows, promotes and produces: Street Art.

The MURo is a site-specific project, i.e. designed to allow artists to relate to the conformation and history of the places where they live together and where they create their works.

The MURo is a community-specific project, i.e. it aims to perceive and respect the "spirit of the places" and of the community in which it intervenes, and it is shared with the citizens, it is confronted with their ideas and their stories (especially with those who live in or frequent the areas affected by the works).

This has been Diavù's stylistic and curatorial trademark since 2010, focusing the artists' attention on the potential of art to create symbols in which a population can recognise itself. A curatorial idea that Diavù himself applied to the series of TV documentaries on Street Art "MURO" that he curated for Sky Arte, and which is now followed - and imitated - by many Urban Art projects.

The collection of Street Art works created by the MURo, mainly murals, started in 2010 in the Quadraro and Torpignattara neighbourhoods but then spread throughout Rome, also thanks to important projects such as GRAArt (17 large murals around the Grande Raccordo Anulare) and POPSTAIRS (5 large stairways painted in Rome); it is a collection of dozens and dozens of works of art created by important names in Contemporary Art from all over the world that belongs to the community.

The MURo - Museo di Urban Art di Roma is an open-air, public and free museum project that was created "from below", i.e. it was not imposed on the citizens and the territory by administrations, curators, financiers, sponsors or other external factors.
The works, even today and where possible, are proposed and discussed with representatives of neighbourhood committees and the citizens themselves, through public meetings and social networks.

The work is carried out by the staff of the MURo Cultural Association: directed by the creator and curator of the project David "Diavù" Vecchiato, followed by Giorgio Silvestrelli, Mirko Pierri, Serena Melandri and others, and administered by the association.

The idea behind MURo is to transform some areas of the city of Rome into an open-air museum where Contemporary Art can interact with the citizens on a daily basis, thanks to the works (both organised and spontaneous) of Street Art.

The artistic interventions are mainly suggested and guided by a curatorship that aims to relate with those who live in and frequent those spaces, as well as with the history of the spaces themselves and with the artists, with the intention of creating works that are shared and appreciated and that draw a new cultural layer in the urban landscape, capable of respecting and disseminating the memories, the characteristics and the very identity of the territory that hosts it.

Stimulating a Renaissance of Contemporary Public Art has been one of MURo's objectives from the beginning.
 
The MURo saw the light in 2010 thanks to the first murals created by Diavù in the historic area of the Quadraro district, at the crossroads between the 5th and 7th Municipalities of the City of Rome, and currently has works on display in many other districts.

To find out where the murals are and suggested routes to visit them http://muromuseum.blogspot.com/p/map.html

With the intention of being able to offer (sooner or later) also a stable platform - i.e. an active museum/cultural centre - to its visitors, the MURo is for now an open-air museum, a collection of works by artists from all over the world created for the citizens in the streets and other private and public spaces of the Municipality of Rome.

To find out when they were made http://muromuseum.blogspot.com/p/news.ht