The Royal Museums of Turin dedicate an exhibition to their forgotten African collections

From October 27, 2023 to February 25, 2023, the Sale Chiablese of the Royal Museums of Turin will host the exhibition AFRICA. The Forgotten Collections, curated by Elena De Filippis, Enrica Pagella, and Cecilia Pennacini, produced by the Musei Reali with the Regional Directorate of Museums of Piedmont and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University of Turin (MAET), the collaboration of CoopCulture, and the support of the Santagata Foundation for the Economy of Culture for the program of collateral activities.

Between 2022 and 2023, the Royal Museums and the Regional Directorate of Museums conducted recovery and restoration work on the African collections in the storerooms of the Royal Armory and the collections of the Castles of Aglié and Racconigi, and supported research projects on the photographic albums kept at the Royal Library of Turin and in the two Savoy residences: hundreds of works, rescued from oblivion, were catalogued and restored. During the course of the project, the need emerged to engage with experts in African history and the communities of origin in order to build a dialogue, an intercultural bridge and a key to the contemporary reality of the new citizens, particularly from the Horn of Africa.

This reflection led to a collaboration with MAET and conceptual artist Bekele Mekonnen Nigussu, a lecturer at Addis Ababa University, who, with the mediation of Lucrezia Cippitelli, was a guest at the Royal Museums for a research residency, aimed at creating a site-specific work for the exhibition.

More than 150 objects including statues, tools, amulets, jewelry, weapons, shields, drums and photographs from the Savoy collections and MAET in Turin, with loans from Palazzo Madama - Museo Civico d’Arte Antica in Turin and the Museum of Civilizations in Rome, will be on display.

The itinerary is divided into five sections, organized around Turin personalities who were present in Africa in the second half of the 19th century, and whose collections found their way into public collections. The first section, Italians in Africa: explorers, adventurers and consuls, is devoted to the collections, between 1857 and 1890, of Giacomo Antonio Brun Rollet, explorer of the sources of the Nile in Sudan, Vincenzo Filonardi, shipowner and consul in Zanzibar in 1882, and Giuseppe Corona, active in the Congo. The second section, The Ways of Exploitation: Engineers in the Congo, focuses attention on the contribution of engineers and technicians from Turin such as Pietro Antonio Gariazzo, Carlo Sesti, Tiziano Veggia and Stefano Ravotti engaged in the construction of colonial infrastructure in the Congo, with a selection of weapons, musical instruments, textiles and artistic and everyday objects. The third section, Conquering the Mountain: the Rwenzori, is dedicated to the expedition of the Duke of the Abruzzi and Vittorio Sella to the massif on the border between Uganda and the present Democratic Republic of Congo, documented by an extraordinary series of photographic images. The section From the Partition of Africa to Colonial Aggression collects works from Eritrea, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, Somalia, and Ethiopia: mainly exchanges and diplomatic gifts are included, as well as artifacts accumulated or looted in the course of the Italian colonial wars. The exhibition concludes with an installation by Ethiopian artist Bekele Mekonnen: a contemporary reinterpretation of the relationships documented by the works on display.

The exhibition is made possible by a grant from Law 77/2006, which supports projects of Italian sites placed under UNESCO protection, such as the site of the Savoy Residences, and a contribution from the Royal Museums of Turin.

A dissemination program accompanies the scientific and ethical narrative of the route through a series of events, including institutional insights and visual culture, musical and artistic performances. The Public Program, developed by the Regional Directorate of Museums with the Royal Museums, the University of Turin and the support of the Santagata Foundation for the Economy of Culture, is aimed at involving local institutions and new cultural spaces that operate with social intent: activities to reason about the history of relations between Italy and Africa starting from common heritage, open debate on issues concerning the deconstruction of colonial narratives, new citizenships, the emergence of hybrid cultural histories and productions. The program, which will include workshops at schools in Agliè and Racconigi, will be hosted at the Circolo dei Lettori, the Royal Museums, Palazzo Madama, the Museum of Oriental Art, Racconigi Castle, Agliè Castle, at Palazzo Carignano, in the San Salvario Neighborhood House, at the National Film Archive of the Resistance and will also involve the Sub-Saharan Africa Women’s Association and Generation II and the Intercultural Center of the City of Turin.

For info: https://museireali.beniculturali.it/

Image: Ethiopian Shield (c. 1936; leather, leather, cloth, brass, silver, gold, semi-precious stones, diameter 41 cm). Gift of an Ethiopian commander (degiac) to King Victor Emmanuel III through Rodolfo Graziani, 1936. Royal Museums, Royal Armory.

The Royal Museums of Turin dedicate an exhibition to their forgotten African collections

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