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Home 9 Uncategorized 9 Introduction for visitors to the Museum of Civilizations of Rome

Introduction for visitors to the Museum of Civilizations of Rome: The Palace of Sciences

Established in 2016, Rome’s Museum of Civilizations has roots in a very long history, inheriting its collections, libraries, and archives from a variety of museums that preceded it. In particular, the collections which you are about to view – assembled within the Palace of Sciences, at different moments in history – originate in:

  • The National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography, inaugurated in 1876 by Archaeologist Luigi Pigorini in a wing of the Collegio Romano building, where the prehistoric and ethnographic collections of the Kircherian Museum were also housed, one of the most fascinating pre-modern Wunderkammer (“cabinet of curiosities”) in the world;
  • The National Museum of Oriental Art, inaugurated in 1957 in Palazzo Brancaccio, in which the findings from the archaeological expedition of the IsMEO-Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East, co-founded by explorer, religious scholar, and Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci, were displayed;
  • The collections of the dissolved African Museum – previously the Colonial Museum (1914-35), the Museum of Italian Africa (1935-43), and the African Museum (from 1947 until its closure in 1971) – currently in the process of being re-catalogued;
  • The geo-paleontological and litho-mineralogical collections of ISPRA-Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, successor to the Geological Survey of Italy, which moved here in 2022;
  • The National Museum of the Middle Ages, which transferred here in 1967.

With more than 2,000,000 objects and documents spread out between exhibition rooms and storage, the Museum of Civilizations is a museum of and about museums, in which the oldest findings of Italian museology are preserved. It is also a veritable time machine that journeys around the world; a place in which to celebrate human creativity in all its various forms of expression, and in its connections with the animal, mineral, and plant worlds.

In progress: masterpieces from the Collections of African, American, and Oceanian Arts and Cultures

During the period of momentary closure of the areas of the Collections of African, American and Oceanian Arts and Cultures, to allow for plant upgrading work and rehanging processes, the Museum of Civilizations presents a new and unprecedented temporary display of these collections at the entrance of the Palace of Sciences.  

The curators of the Museum of Civilizations offer to the public a selection of masterpieces, some of which have never been exhibited before, to share and narrate the museum’s ethnographic heritage, even “in progress” during rehanging works. At the same time, the curators experiment with and propose historical researchers (including the ones on provenance) and thematic connections between works, artifacts, and testimonies, which will be integrated in the overall rehanging of the collections.

The rehanging in progress – which will be completed by the end of the summer – coincides in 2025 with the work associated with the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the collections. The first core of the collection came, in fact, from the Royal National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography of Rome founded in 1875 by palethnologist Luigi Pigorini in the former Collegio Romano.

The African Arts and Cultures Collection

The African Arts and Cultures Collection comprises around 10,000 objects, mostly acquired between 1875 and 1920. The bulk of the collection comes from Italian explorers, scholars, missionaries, military personnel, officials and entrepreneurs who, between the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, operated in different areas and political realities of the vast and multifaceted African continent.

The purposes of their presence in Africa were diverse, sometimes the following coincided: conversion of the people to the Christian religion, commercial activities, scientific research, invasion and colonial rule. Some objects are the result of gifts and diplomatic exchanges prior to the colonial period, while others were collected between the 16th and 17th centuries in the wunderkammer of pre-unification Italy. Evidence of the material production of different cultural, social and political African realities, the objects and works that compose the African Arts and Cultures Collection of the Museum of Civilizations are historical and anthropological documents, and in many cases artistic masterpieces. The collections comprise mainly weapons, ornaments, objects of daily use and sculptures.

This display features specimens of works that came from Africa to Italy during the late Renaissance and nineteenth- and twentieth-century objects, some of which have not been exhibited to the public for some time and that will be integrated and further contextualized in the narratives provided by the overall rehanging of the Museum of Civilizations’ African Arts and Cultures Collection. GD

The American Arts and Cultures Collection

The approximately 20,000 objects of the American Arts and Cultures Collection belong to different geographical and cultural contexts of North, Central, and South America. These are archaeological finds and artifacts from the indigenous peoples and cultures of the two American continents, covering a chronological span from antiquity to the 20th century.

The channels through which these objects arrived in Italy are diverse: some arrived in the wake of the “exotic” interests of private collectors in the 16th-17th centuries; some were taken from the places traversed by Italian exploratory expeditions in the 19th century; and others are the result of donations and purchases made by missionaries, travelers and collectors, or exchanges with other Italian and international cultural institutions.

The objects in the collection belong to different typological categories and consent to have a closer look at the rich variety of formal solutions, styles and techniques elaborated over millennia by the peoples of the Americas in response to social, economic, religious/spiritual and artistic needs.

In the display presented here, a selection of important evidence from anthropological, archaeological, and art-historical perspectives is offered. Some masterpieces, such as pre-Columbian masks from present-day Mexico, are already known to the public. Other works and artifacts have, however, been researched and selected from storage and are being displayed for the first time in decades, testifying to the ongoing research for the overall rehanging of the Museum of Civilizations’ American Arts and Cultures Collection. FMA-CF

The Oceanian Arts and Cultures Collection

The term “Oceania” conventionally refers to an area of the earth’s surface covered mostly by the waters of the Pacific Ocean: a continent made up of thousands of islands, inhabited by hundreds of different peoples with traditions and religions dating back thousands of years. The Oceanian Arts and Cultures Collection includes around 15,000 objects from present-day Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Australia and New Zealand.

At the Royal National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome founded in 1875, the first core of 129 ethnographic objects (found between 1635 and 1680) belonged to the collections of the Kircherian Museum, founded by Jesuit Father Athanasius Kircher, yet only 3 objects came from Oceania. The artifacts preserved in the Museum of Civilizations’ Oceanian Arts and Cultures Collection came later, consisting of the collections formed by explorers, travelers and scholars since the late 19th century. Among these there are the objects gathered by explorer Enrico Hillyer Giglioli during his voyage around the world on the Magenta steamship, between 1865 and 1868, and by ethnologist Lamberto Loria in British New Guinea and Melanesia, between 1889 and 1897.

The artifacts on display in this exhibit represent a partial selection of the hundreds of cultures, traditions, customs, religions, and forms of spirituality of the peoples of the vast Oceanian continent, which will be interconnected and documented in the overall rehanging of the Museum of Civilizations’ Oceanian Arts and Cultures Collections. MO