Principal of the University of Valencia, Esteban Morcillo, has presented at a press conference the Textile Museum of the Valencian Country, located in one of the rooms of the Vila Palace in Ontinyeny. The project has been conducted under the direction and impulse of the University of Valencia along with the Ontinyent City Council and Caixa Ontinyent through the University Foundation of la Vall d'Albaida (FUVA).
The presentation was attended by Jorge Rodríguez, Mayor of Ontinyent and president of FUVA; Antonio Carbonell, president of Caixa Ontinyent; and Rafael Gil, professor of Museography at the University of Valencia and responsible for the Master Plan of the Museum. Jorge Hermosilla, vice‐principal for Territorial Projection and Participation, and Daniel González Serisola, delegate of the principal for Students, also attended the event.
In the new room there will be used gathered material for the Textile Museum Foundation, which until now was stored up with no possibility to be visited. The project of creating a museum for this new room has been done by Rafael Gil and Marta Berlanga, student of the Master's Degree in Cultural Heritage of the University of Valencia, thanks to a six-month scholarship paid by the Foundation Ontinyent Campus, who assumed the project execution.
The room is divided into four areas –instruments, elaboration, textiles and audio-visual-, and hosts around seventy pieces from almost one hundred and thirty inventories, related to the process of textile manufacturing. According to professor Rafael Gil, “these pieces, among which there are reeds, paraffin wax, gold and silver threads, scissors, gum Arabic, weights, eighteenth and nineteenth century looms, ancient books, samples of different tissues, espolins, or velvets, explain the process of textile manufacturing, and develop the museographic discourse, that is, they try to explain how the textile is made, with particular emphasis on the elements of Ontinyent.
During the presentation, Esteban Morcillo stressed that such a museum project “represents a living project, which recovers, preserves historical memory of the past, vital to build the future. It is a training and research project part of a set of activities which represent the strong commitment which exists between the university and society”.
For his part, Jorge Rodríguez claimed the survival of an industry -the textile-, “knowledge-intensive that works with a skilled workforce, with large export vocation and which has in Ontinyent 20% of the sector across Spain. We should continue to invest in our industry”.
Last update: 6 de march de 2014 13:11.
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