The product offerings found in Italian museums' commercial areas can only be described as rather lacking; suffice it to visit the bookstores in New York's MoMA or the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC (just to mention the best-known) and compare them with those in Italian museums that are equal or even greater in terms of the richness and prestige of their exhibits.
I have known Alessandro Loschiavo for a long time and applaud his inquisitiveness for the novel aspects in design that inevitably extend to the enhancing of new generations, drawing inspiration from the example of predecessors.
Scanning through the images, captions and prototypes, I can only say how pleasurably impressed I was and, moreover, enchanted by the cleverness of these up-to-date
and daring reinterpretations of many projects seeking realization and exposure. Furthermore, the paper theme is especially fitting in the year that UNESCO has decreed that 2012 be the year of the book. Also of significance – though I think one could consider it just a start – is that there is a profound link between the object
and the museum's collection.
My wish for the future is for greater multidiscipline action between design and collections, and I lean towards the hypothesis (already successfully verified in international museums that I frequently visit) of seeing that such products of design would find success beyond the confines of the relevant museums.
My impression is that not all the prototypes are up to the same mark. Some appear not to adhere completely to the Collection but rather conceived irrespective of it.
The "Musei di Carta" museums might therefore start to take another look at their exhibits, reappraising their essence as objects of design to confer on them an added dimension of considerable significance. At three years from the centenary
of the founding of the Futurist movement, the Musei di Carta project pays homage
to the principle of work of art fruition, going beyond the museum setting aspect
to become an everyday item.
In order to support and share the identity of the object with the museum collection
that inspired it, I would suggest that the museum's logo might be present on the object precisely for the aim of exceeding the merely territorial aspect.
Should this Musei di Carta idea spread – as I strongly hope it does – and find producers among the museum souvenir distribution companies responsive to the making of these objects, I think it would be important to set up a commission having the task of selecting the objects as a supervisory committee, with the purpose of lending a general vision
for the entire production and proposition.
I should be glad to make myself available for any kind of assistance and support
for this courageous, experimental and admirable initiative, which once again highlights the exceptionality of Italian ingeniousness, unfortunately often unacknowledged.

Renato Miracco
Critic and Cultural Attachè at the Embassy of Italy, Washington DC