EUR_Asia

With EUR_Asia, the Museum of Civilizations inaugurates a new itinerary dedicated to the Collections of Asian Arts and Cultures. The project begins a program of permanent musealization that by 2026, on the ground floor of the Palace of Sciences, will unite the archaeological and artistic collections of the former National Museum of Oriental Art, founded in 1957 at the instigation of historian of religions Giuseppe Tucci, and the Asian ethnographic collections of the former National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography, founded by archaeologist Luigi Pigorini in 1875. EUR_Asia began the return these collections to the community and public in 2024 – the 130th anniversary of the birth of Giuseppe Tucci and the 40th anniversary of his death – already opening a conduit and sharing the project of permanent musealization during its own making.

Encompassing some 200 masterpieces and testimonies, organized in five sections – with artifacts, but also archival documents, diagnostic reports, and new artistic productions – EUR_Asia constitutes a museological and methodological reflection that reconstructs and brings into perspective the long history of the Asian Arts and Cultures Collections of the Museum of Civilizations.

In EUR_Asia – a play on the words referring to the Eurasian continent and the role of EUR as home of the national museum of world civilizations and cultures – rather than arranging them according to geographic or chronological criteria, the works are articulated in 16 narratives. Each of these contributes to analyzing the multiple relationships between materiality and everyday or ritual functions, the connection between spatial coordinates and temporal eras, knowledge and beliefs, natural materials, traditions and techniques, thus transcending the very concept of limit or boundary to delve instead into the porosity and dynamism between cultural subjects, historical matrices and artistic and philosophical themes of Asian cultures as a whole.

Together we traverse all of Asia, encountering its permeable experiences of civilizations, religions, social systems and systems of thought, until ultimately evoking the hypothetical contours of “Eurasia”: the union between Europe and Asia. At the same time, through encounters and comparisons, exchanges and negotiations, we map the multiple and composite histories of the Museum of Civilizations collections. After all, with this museum, Asia begins in EUR – acronym for the never-inaugurated 1942 Universal Exposition of Rome – becoming precisely … EUR_Asia.

The project is introduced by an initial in-depth discussion of the role of restoration and scientific research (Chronicles and Spectra of Restoration) installed in a space connecting the museum’s daily activities with its audiences. On the first floor, around the monumental staircase, the layout in the porticos is inspired by the structure of Buddhist caves, in particular Chaityagrha 26, a sanctuary carved from the living rock of Ajanta (Maharashtra, India). The path is marked out in vitrines housing works divided into 16 cross-cutting narratives of Asian culture and arts. On the right side: The color white; Writings and calligraphy; Ceremonial forms of libations: sacred and profane; Royalty: reality and symbolism; Dances, music and self-awareness; The genders of divinity; Hierogamies: cosmic and divine couples; Cosmologies and cosmogonies: images of the world and myths about the birth of the universe. On the left side: Overcoming suffering: yoga and contemplative techniques; Death and immortality; Care of the body and spirit; The adorned body: the physical and symbolic body; Female: women, queens, goddesses; The human being and nature; Imaginary bestiaries; Water.

Closing the EUR_Asia exhibit route, to the sides of Giulio Rosso’s historic stained-glass window, is a section dedicated to the future overall reorganization of the Asian Arts and Cultures Collections, to be carried out with the support of the strategic Great Cultural Heritage Project funded by the Ministry of Culture. Here, for the first time, the public can view the architectural drawings for the construction, renovation and upgrading project for the building hosting the largest Italian museum dedicated to Asian arts and cultures. Also in this location are some historic cabinets from the original location of the Pigorini Museum, at the Roman College, and artifacts from the original ethnographic collections.

A QR-code leads to a digital brochure exploring the project in museographic terms, sharing a series of reflections that examine the supposed distinction between East and West: “Is it possible to free our knowledge of a culture from its geographic boundaries – which in any case are mobile? “From within the so-called ‘West’, can we imagine museum projects and identities dedicated to the so-called ‘East’ which are somehow no longer based on one-sided narratives?” “Is it possible develop a museum where the sharing of cultures, including the history of collection origins and interpretations, truly results in sharing?”

Finally, EUR_Asia also includes an exhibition within an exhibition: an installation by Gala Porras-Kim, a multidisciplinary artist of Colombian-Korean-American origin, completed in conclusion to her two-year experience as a Research Fellow at the Museum of Civilizations and Artist in Residence at the Museum of Oriental Art in Turin. The audio-video installation brings us into intimate relationships with the objects of the collections and the museum staff who care for them on a daily basis. For A Recollection Returns with a Soft Touch (playing with the word recollection as both “remembering” and “re-collecting”), the artist asked to film the responsible officers of the former National Museum of Oriental Art as they present some objects to which they feel particularly close, for professional or personal reasons. Leaving only their hands visible and their voices audible, their stories are presented in the same kinds of display cases that would usually house these objects, thus giving their memories, skills and sensibilities an alienating subjectivity with respect to the official, seemingly neutral and impartial voice of the museum. These multiple interpretations reveal to us that museum objects are also always subjects, and that understanding the past cannot be an exclusively objective and scientific fact, because each museum collection is a living entity with which we can activate sensitive and individual relationships.