The Siena Annex — The 8 Museum

established september 2024

coordinates 43°19′N, 11°20′E

collection 72 works accessioned; a selection of eight exhibited below

holdings on permanent loan from the built environment of Siena; not one has been moved

premises the seventeen contrade of Siena and the Campo they contest

hours continuous, except on the days of the Palio, when the committee stays indoors

admission attention

An annex of The 8 Museum is a city in which encounters have occurred. Unlike the annexes of other institutions, it holds no building, employs no staff, and has acquired nothing. Its collection remains permanently installed where it was found — on terracotta, enamel, pink chalk, a red scarf, and a Fiat — and is maintained, without their knowledge, by the residents, the weather, and the municipal services of the city itself.

The Siena Annex was established over two days in September 2024, fifty-four of its seventy-two works accessioned on the second, when the practitioner had learned where to look. The city is divided into seventeen contrade, each with its own animal, colours, and grievances, and the committee notes that eights were found in the territory of most of them without being able to say which, the museum having no view on the Palio beyond a general preference for the number on the horse. The annex completed its paperwork on the same day as Lucca and Florence. Each of the annex's works was photographed in situ, untouched, under existing conditions, and left exactly as it was. Visitors to Siena are advised that the collection remains on public display. Every work was last verified on the day of its encounter; what the weather, the council, and the ordinary attrition of the world have since deaccessioned, the museum does not undertake to know.