The Collections of Italian Folk Arts and Traditions consist of about 150,000 works and documents, 500,000 photographic negatives and 25,000 library titles, all referring to the customs and characteristics of the peoples of different Italian regions, addressing such themes as folk memory, systems of connection and communication, festive and ritual activities (street performances, theater, magic and spirituality, games, entertainments), practices of daily living and dwelling, of traditional crafts and industries, and the management of land and sea resources (agricultural, pastoral and seafaring work). The bulk of these collections were formed over the course of the 20th century, in association with political and scientific disciplinary developments, as follows.

• Lamberto Loria

As early as 1881, archaeologist Luigi Pigorini, director of the Royal Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum, reported to the Ministry of Public Education on the need to collect and protect Italian ethnographic evidence in a dedicated location. Although unsuccessful, he had requested space for a new section of the Royal Museum that would “include what is still special about our rural populations in industries, in utensils and ornaments, in the fashions of clothing.” In 1905 ethnographer Lamberto Loria, after numerous expeditions to Russia, India, Egypt, New Guinea and Eritrea, realized that Italy itself was also in need of documentation of its agro-pastoral culture, which by this time was undergoing profound changes. Loria set out to collect folk documents and artifacts and to promote the study of Italian customs, traditions and folklore: research that in his view, by contributing to knowledge of their own culture among ordinary citizens, would strengthen national thought and feeling.

Loria’s plans came to fruition in September 1906 with the establishment in Florence of the first Museum of Italian Ethnography. Through the following decades, Loria and his collaborators Aldobrandino Mochi, Alessandro D’Ancona, Francesco Baldasseroni, Giuseppe Pitrè and Raffaele Corso would collect categories of objects and documents referring to the customs characteristic of the different regions. In the span of two years, from 1906 to 1908, from the 2,000 objects first displayed, the collection had already grown to 5,000 items. The founding years of the museum, however, coincided with those of the lead-up to the International Exhibition of Art, Industry and Labour, hosted by Italy in 1911. Ferdinando Martini, Minister of Public Education, in his role as vice-president of the exhibition committee, therefore proposed to Loria that the museum be transformed into an Ethnographic Exhibition, guaranteeing him, upon its closure and as a direct consequence, the creation of a national museum dedicated to Italian ethnography, which would be placed under state protection. In 1908 Loria accepted the proposal and began coordinating a series of campaigns aimed at acquiring materials from the various regions, supported by academics, teachers, doctors, local scholars, priests and collaborators throughout the different provinces of Italy. By 1911 the collection included 30,000 objects referring to the folk customs of the different Italian regions. The establishment of the new museum was integral to a broader cultural and cognitive program, which included a rigorous academic investigation of the diversity of customs, traditional practices and rituals over time and space.

• The Exhibition of 1911

In 1911, the Ministry inaugurated the International Exhibition, conceived as a celebration of the progress of the Italy over the previous 50 years, since the first unification of national territories in 1861. The exhibition was presented simultaneously in the cities of Turin, Florence and Rome, the former two having earlier served as temporary capitals of the new Kingdom of Italy. In Rome, the celebrations were concentrated in the Ethnographic Exhibition and the Regional Exhibition, located in the area of the former Piazza d’Armi and in events organized on the right bank of the Tiber.

The entire exhibition was structured as a kind of journey through Italy via 14 pavilions, buildings that reproduced the elements considered most characteristic and beautiful of the different regions, enlivened by about 40 “ethnographic groups”, thus composing true living pictures. Naples, for example, was presented through the recreation of the ancient neighborhood of Santa Lucia; Sardinia through recreations of the megalithic nuraghe and the farmhouses of the Campidano area. These presentations were developed through enormous amounts of research and filing, aimed also at establishing the new National Museum of Italian Ethnography, which in Loria’s intentions would foster structured folkloric studies.

• The first Congress of Italian Ethnography, 1911

In October 1911, building on the successes of the exhibition, Loria together with the Italian Ethnographic Society organized the first Congress of Italian Ethnography, with the aims of : promoting research into the customs and traditions of the Italian people; defining the methodological lines of the future National Museum of Italian Ethnography, confirming its social role in the preservation of traditional regional activities.

• From the founding of the National Museum of Folk Arts and Traditions (1956) to the Museum of Civilizations (2016)

With Loria’s death in April of 1913 and soon after, the onset of World War I, progress towards the new museum came to a halt. With the end of the war interest in folk traditions revived, and with Royal Decree No. 2111 of 10 September 1923, the new museum was officially established. Also in that same year, a major reform of the education system provided that regional ethnography would be taught in primary and secondary schools, while in 1927, the Minister of Education hoped that the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy “would have the necessary fulfillment in the examination of customs and regions with their passions, their memories, and their traditions.”

As late as 1936, however, given that the museum still lacked a permanent venue, a solution seemed possible within the framework of the Universal Exposition of Rome (EUR) planned for 1942, and in fact the plans for the Exposition included construction of the Palace of Folk Traditions. Unfortunately, the events of World War II delayed the completion of the museum and the final arrangement of the collections, which, kept in crates at Villa d’Este, were significantly damaged by the 1943 bombing of Tivoli. Meantime, in the early post-war, the Italian state had acquired the encyclopedic collection of Evan G. Gorga, whose objects pertaining to Italian folk cultures were added to the museum collections.

In 1954, the museum officers signed the lease for the Palace of Folk Traditions in EUR, and on 20 April 1956, the National Museum of Folk Arts and Traditions opened. In 2016, together with four other museums of complementary themes, the museum was merged into the Museum of Civilizations.

Palace of Folk Arts and Traditions

The museum visitor encounters three interconnected thematic sections. The first describes the religious ceremonies of different communities, presenting scale models and monumental originals of the processional machines of the Ceri of Gubbio, the Macchina of Santa Rosa of Viterbo, the Gigli of Nola, the “grain carts” of Foglianise, and the Chariot of Santa Rosalia of Palermo. Also in this section are rooms devoted to traditions of transportation, including examples of Sicilian carts, as well as games and street performances, including itinerant theaters of puppets and marionettes. The presentations of ornaments and costume document the different carnival traditions and the influences on these from commedia dell’arte theatre. The second section explores the dimension of domestic living, with its furnishings, utensils and daily routines, in the unfolding of life from birth to death. The third section analyzes the scenarios of the various trades, from craft industries to seafaring, agricultural and pastoral work, reflecting on traditional economies and their uses of resources.

On the occasion of the 1911 Ethnographic Exhibition, Lamberto Loria gathered an extraordinary collection of nativity figures from the various Italian regions: more than a thousand pieces, contributing fundamentally to the understanding of the multifaceted historical-anthropological phenomenon of the nativity scene. Extraordinary among these are the Neapolitan figures of the 17th and 19th centuries, allowing representation of all the themes of the Gospels, from the Annunciation to the Nativity, up to the Flight into Egypt, celebrating the great event of the “divine mystery”, in a spectacle at once sacred and profane. An Italian art par excellence, still alive in the market stalls of the Neapolitan historic centre, the nativity scene is a quintessence of contrasts, uniting devotional imagery, religious history, daily life, spectacle and wonder in the artistry of figure-makers, painters, designers and architects who continue to transmit and communicate this tradition, also represented in one of the emblematic collections of the Museum of Civilizations.