Foreword

Patrizia Famà
Deputy Director, Office of Programmes for the Public
MUSE

MUSE, the Museo delle Scienze, has enthusiastically welcomed the proposal of the Museo Nazionale della Montagna “Duca degli Abruzzi” - CAI Torino to continue their collaboration in the museographic sphere begun in 2020. With an innovative interpretation as regards the irreplaceable value of biodiversity, the exhibition The Mountain Touch evokes the concept of experiencing nature and the resulting scientifically documented beneficial effects on health.

Health makes up part of humankind’s capital; it is also a resource for economic prosperity and social development. The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined health as a “state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (Constitution of WHO, 1946). This definition thus includes the component of well-being as important for defining an individual’s level of health. Furthermore, WHO describes nature, including biodiversity which is the cornerstone of the myriads of essential ecosystems for our life, as our greatest source of health and well-being.
For example, it is known that our immune system is exercised and strengthened by exposure to the microbial biodiversity of the natural environment. This and other scientific evidence have led to reconsidering natural prescriptions, known also as sustainable prescriptions, such as treatments and activities undertaken in nature that can help to improve people’s states of health, alongside traditional pharmacological and rehabilitative interventions.

The stories and evidence narrated along the exhibition path, evocatively represented by art, aim to stimulate in the public an awareness with respect to the fact that human health is inseparable from environmental health, with the plea to urgently consider nature and its vial functions not only in an instrumental way but also including aspects of harmony and nature ethics.

Enriched with further works and themes linked to our territory and to mountain environments, the 2024 version of The Mountain Touch exhibition enables us to underscore the urgency of adopting a new paradigm that would overturn the current negative trend of changes taking place in the environmental ecosystem and climate and its repercussions on the health of humankind and on the state of the natural systems on which it depends.