News
15 January: what is celebrated?
15 January places us at a curious crossroads between the everyday and the symbolic. On one hand, museums around the world open themselves to the spontaneity of the selfie, inviting the public to explore their galleries with a playful, almost intimate perspective. On the other, the United States dedicates this date to an accessory as old as human history itself: the hat. Two very different celebrations, but united by a common idea: the way we present ourselves to others, whether through a photograph or the object we wear on our heads. Both commemorations speak of identity, personal expression, and that very human desire to leave a visual mark on time.
World Selfie Day in Museums
For centuries, museums were solemn, almost silent spaces, where visitors moved with restrained respect. But in recent years, the relationship between visitors and collections has changed: the museum experience has become more conversational, more personal, more open. World Selfie Day, celebrated every third Wednesday in January, was born precisely from this desire to bring art closer to everyday life. The invitation is simple: take a selfie inside a museum and share it, not as a frivolous act, but as a way to narrate your own relationship with culture.
The museum, that place dedicated to permanence, is transformed for a day into a stage for a fleeting image. The visitor stops being a spectator and becomes the protagonist; art is no longer on the other side of the glass but becomes part of the frame. There is something revealing in this gesture: by photographing ourselves next to a work, we not only want to take away a memory, but also inscribe ourselves—even if only for a moment—into the long history of what we observe. A selfie in a museum is, in a sense, a declaration of belonging to the cultural story we are part of.
National Hat Day
In the United States, 15 January celebrates an object that has accompanied humanity since Ancient Egypt. The hat began as protection against the weather, but soon became a symbol: of status, of profession, of identity. In Greece, headpieces marked social standing; in Rome, the pileus was given to freed slaves; in the Early Modern period, wide-brimmed hats and extravagant feathers distinguished nobles and courtiers. The hat has always been a small manifesto about who we are.
Today, its diversity is almost infinite: wide-brimmed hats, bucket hats, baseball caps, liturgical mitres, campaign hats, fedoras… Each shape holds a story. Some are practical tools, others fashion statements, others cultural symbols passed down from generation to generation. Even their manufacture has left unusual traces, such as the historical use of mercury in felt processing, the origin of the famous "mad as a hatter".
National Hat Day invites us to reclaim this accessory as a piece of character, a detail capable of transforming the attitude with which we step out into the street. It is also a celebration of the craft of hatters, artisans who still keep alive an art that demands precision and patience. Putting on a hat is not just about shielding yourself from the sun: it is choosing a gesture that accompanies our way of being in the world.