Plane crash in Ethiopia, dies Sebastiano Tusa, Sicily's culture councilor and archaeologist

Eight Italian victims in this morning’s air tragedy in Addis Ababa, where an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 crashed without leaving any survivors: there were 149 passengers and eight crew members, of 33 different nationalities. Among the victims was Sebastiano Tusa, Sicily Regional Councilor for Culture and an experienced archaeologist. He was in Ethiopia for a UNESCO project, and was aboard the plane that crashed. Tusa leaves behind his wife, Valeria Patrizia Li Vigni, director of the Palazzo Riso Museum of Contemporary Art in Palermo, to whom the Regional Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Sicily sent its condolences.

Tusa, born in Palermo in 1952, had graduated in paleontology and, during his career, had taken part in several archaeological missions, including organizing some in Italy and the Middle East. In Sicily, he had directed an excavation in Pantelleria in 2003 that led to the discovery of the so-called "Pantelleria heads,“ three important Roman portraits from the imperial age, which are now preserved at the Castle of Pantelleria after having been exhibited at the Archaeological Museum in Palermo and the British Museum in London. Tusa had also been the first ”Superintendent of the Sea" appointed by the Sicily Region’s Department of Culture (the appointment was in 2004). He had also been a university lecturer: he had taught marine archaeology at the University of Palermo and paleoethnology at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples.

Sebastiano Tusa had then moved from research to administration: in that role, he was superintendent of Trapani, again superintendent of the sea in 2012, and then, since April 11, 2018, councillor for cultural heritage of the Region of Sicily in the junta led by Nello Musumeci. Appointed as an independent (although he has never hidden his political views: in 2012 he had also run for Palermo city council in the ranks of Future and Freedom for Italy, without being elected), Tusa had held the post going to replace Vittorio Sgarbi, who had meanwhile been elected to Parliament.

“I have just received official confirmation from the Crisis Unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation,” Sicilian Regional President Nello Musumeci wrote on Facebook. “Councilor Sebastiano Tusa was on the plane that crashed in Ethiopia. I am devastated. It is a terrible tragedy, which I still cannot believe: I remain dumbfounded. I lose a friend, a tireless worker, an alderman of great ability and balance, who was going to Kenya on business. An honest and decent man, who loved Sicily as few do. An unforgettable protagonist of the best cultural policies of the Island.”

Plane crash in Ethiopia, dies Sebastiano Tusa, Sicily's culture councilor and archaeologist

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