Rome's Museum of Civilizations plans to become Italy's largest museum of Asian arts and cultures

The Museum of Civilizations in Rome has unveiled EUR_Asia, the new temporary itinerary dedicated to the Collections of Asian Arts and Cultures. Spread over five sections between the ground and second floors of the Palazzo delle Scienze, the exhibition brings together some 200 works, including artifacts, archival documents, reports of diagnostic investigations, and new artistic productions. The museographic journey aims to explore both the long history and future developments of the Asian Arts and Cultures Collections of the Museum of Civilizations.

The exhibition also includes A Recollection Returns with a Soft Touch, an audiovisual intervention by multidisciplinary artist Gala Porras-Kim, who serves as Research Fellow at the Museum of Civilizations and is Artist in Residence at the MAO-Museo d’Arte Orientale in Turin, a partner institution in the project.

EUR_Asia marks the beginning of a larger project that aims to create Italy’s largest museum of Asian arts and cultures. By 2026, the archaeological and artistic collections of theformerMuseo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale and the ethnographic collections of Asian provenance of theformer Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico will be brought together on the ground floor of the Palazzo delle Scienze in EUR, creating a new, completely renovated exhibition space.

EUR_Asia intends to be, in this sense, a further and important step toward the realization of a museum that, thanks to updated layouts and a methodological framework elaborated in constant dialogue with the communities of origin of the collections and the most advanced contemporary artistic and scientific research advanced, is increasingly accessible, inclusive, and plural, working in line with and in implementation also of the objectives set forth in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan to help place museum accessibility in physical, cognitive, multisensory, and cultural terms at the center of all institutional activity and its programming.

In EUR_Asia ’s display of each work from different areas and eras, the multifaceted relationship between materiality and functionality will be analyzed, thus overcoming the concept of geographical reference or limitation to delve into the porosity and dynamism of cultural subjects, historical matrices and art-historical themes. While remaining displayed in museum showcases, the objects confront each other and the history of the museum institution itself, crossing not only boundaries but also millennia. Thus, an open and free path is configured, both in space and time, which also allows us to reflect on the concept of “oriental art museum” and, therefore, on the very concept of “Orient” , consolidated in Europe during the 19th century. Beyond this historical opposition and the even exoticizing narratives that have ensued, EUR_Asia ’s itinerary instead traces the connections between artifacts, spatial coordinates, temporal epochs, knowledge and beliefs, cultural traditions or craft techniques and natural materials, thus configuring itself as the map - made up of encounters and comparisons, exchanges and negotiations - of the histories, multiple and composite, of these collections

Andrea Viliani, director of the Museum of Civilizations, and Loretta Paderni, contact person for the Grande Progetto Beni Culturali funds allocated to the Museum of Civilizations, stressed that the current planning is an indispensable premise of the ambitious building, plant and equipment upgrading works financed with about 10 million euros from the Ministry of Culture’s strategic plan called Grandi Progetti Beni Culturali. The design was awarded on a European tender to the RTP (Raggruppamento Temporaneo di Professionisti) formed by ISOLARCHITETTI, MILAN ENGINEERING, PRISMA ENGINEERING, NADIA FRULLO, BRH+, and AURORA MECCANICA, and the tender for the assignment of the related works to the economic operator VINCENZO MODUGNO SRL was carried out by Invitalia. Work is scheduled to start in 2024 and be completed by 2026.

The temporary EUR_Asia itinerary, created on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of Giuseppe Tucci’s birth and the 40th anniversary of his death, is designed to involve the public in this process of transformation, through collaborations with authors who will periodically modify and update its layout. In addition, events and in-depth programs organized in collaboration with a plurality of institutional stakeholders, universities, research centers, and third sector entities will be presented from fall 2024, to be announced soon, including Asiatic Collections Netkork-Europe.

Photo by Giorgio Benni.

Rome's Museum of Civilizations plans to become Italy's largest museum of Asian arts and cultures

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