Permanent collection

Plart has one of the most organic collections of historical plastics in the world, the result of the donation of the founders Maria Pia Incutti and Salvatore Paliotto. It is comprised of over 2,000 objects, which are the result of patient and careful scouting work conducted by Maria Pia Incutti, especially between the 1970s and 1990s, in modern antiques shops, flea markets, and auctions around the world.
Alongside works by important Italian and international contemporary artists and designers of the caliber of Tony Cragg, Haim Steinbach, Peter Ghyczy, Riccardo Dalisi, Andrea Branzi, Enrico Baj, Ugo La Pietra, and Gufram, the heart of the collection is represented by a curious and refined selection of anonymous design objects, which tell the story of this varied material from its origins to the present. Bags, jewelry, furnishings, common utensils, home appliances, toys, and radios, made from the late nineteenth century to the present, in bois durci, celluloid, acrylic, and phenolic resin – up to polyethylene, polystyrene, PVC, and ABS.
In addition to tracing an in-depth analysis of the evolution of “popular” taste over the course of two centuries, as written by Renato De Fusco in 2014, “the collection allows you to establish connections and fruitful relationships from a historical-critical point of view, between apparently distant areas: craftsmanship and art on the one hand, and industrial production on the other.” The exceptional encounter between designer objects and Pop Art, and the dual binary of common use and unique objects are shown by the many prototypes designed in the 1960s and 1970s by the Gufram company in Torino. Among the protagonists of the Fondazione’s collection, the “Capitello” signed by Studio65, the “Cactus” by Guido Drocco and Franco Mello, the “Tavolo-erba” and “Incastro” by Mello, “Pratone” by Giorgio Ceretti, Pietro Derossi and Riccardo Rosso, “Farfalla” and “Pavé Piuma” by Piero Gilardi, all in polyurethane, are unmissable.
In 2009, Plart was recognized by the Campania Region as a Museum of regional interest because of the particular value of its collection, and since 2010, it has been part of the network of Italian Design Fields established by the Milan Triennale – Museum of Design, with the objective to bring out and represent this reality that constitutes the Italian design system’s core values.