Vatican Museums

On the occasion of the Jubilee of 1925, Pope Pius XI wanted to organize in the Vatican a Missionary Exposition in order to illustrate the capillary diffusion of the Catholic missions in the world and, at the same time, to make the cultural, artistic and spiritual traditions of all peoples known.
Thanks to the profuse efforts of missionaries in carrying out the task entrusted to them by the Pontiff as mediators with the local populations, participation was particularly active.
Through the letters and lists of the consignments, it was possible to retrace the journey and, in some cases, also to learn the names of those who wanted to donate objects and artefacts to the Vatican Missionary Exposition.
Inaugurated on 24 December 1924, the event came to an end on 9 January 1926, recording more than a million visitors and gaining great critical acclaim. The more than 100,000 works on display, from all over the world, were exhibited in twenty-six pavilions, specially built for the occasion.
The success of the Exposition convinced Pius XI to found, on 12 November 1926, an Ethnological Museum, entrusting its direction to Father Wilhelm Schmidt, SVD (1868-1954), a renowned ethnologist who had presided over the organization of the same Exposition.
On 21 December 1927, the Missionary Ethnological Museum was inaugurated at Saint John Lateran with the works, some 80,000 of them selected from the Missionary Exhibition.
The following year, numerous works from the Museo Borgiano of Propaganda Fide, some of which had already belonged to the collection of Cardinal Stefano Borgia (1731-1804), a scholar and enthusiast of “exotic curiosities”, were brought into the Lateran Ethnological Museum.
However, in 1962 Pope John XXIII ordered that the palace become the seat of the diocese of Rome, leading to the closure of the Ethnological Museum on 1 February 1963. The collection then remained in the storage deposits of Palazzo San Callisto until the opening in 1973 – during the pontifical of Paul VI – of a new exhibition venue inside the Vatican Museums.
Father Jozef Penkowski SVD (1930-2006), in collaboration with the architects of the Passarelli studio, designed the new museum, creating special spaces and areas in order to give maximum centrality and visibility to the works on display, placing them in total harmony with the museum environment.
The museum was structured according to two routes: a “main route”, intended for all visitors and focusing mainly on religious artefacts and the cultural aspects from all over the world; and a “secondary route”, reserved instead to scholars and anthropologists, in order to make the rest of the artefacts – utensils, objects of use, clothing, furniture and so on – visit and accessible.
From 1996 to 2009, under the care and guidance of Don Roberto Zagnoli (1938-2020), an ongoing conservation project was undertaken, thanks to the creation of an ad hoc laboratory formed of a large team of restorers, each one specialized in the restoration of a different type of material.
Thus, the Ethnological Materials Laboratory came into being in 2001, coordinated by Stefania Pandozy until 2023. Since then, the Laboratory has been directed by Catherine Rivière, and continues its mission of conservation, preservation and enhancement of the works entrusted to it.
It was also during Don Zagnoli's tenure that the scientific and systematic cataloguing of the museum's collection began for the first time, which led to a review of the exhibition layout and a better positioning of the artefacts in the different areas.
On the occasion of the fifth centenary of the Vatican Museums (1506-2006), part of the “Asia” section (China, Tibet, Mongolia, Japan, Korea) was opened.
From 2009 to 2023, under the direction and curatorship of Father Nicola Mapelli, the Museum underwent radical changes, both in its exhibition design and in the field of scientific research.
Its principal objectives included the reconnection of the objects on display with the populations who sent the items, and the consequent search for descendants, documents and stories connected to the sending of the artefacts held.
During the reconstruction of the new display spaces, and in collaboration with the original communities, a number of temporary exhibitions and displays were organized in special areas: Rituals of Life (2010), Borobudur Courtyard (2012), Land of Harmony (2014), and Asia Exhibition (2016).
In 2010, the permanent exhibition The Way of the Sea was established along the internal ramp at the entrance of the Museums.
In 2019, with the inauguration of the first exhibition area of the new Ethnological Museum Anima Mundi, the exhibitions Mater Amazonia and the one dedicated to the “Oceania” area were opened to the public. The two exhibition events were exceptionally attended by Pope Francis who, during his visit, recalled that the Museum's mission is: “to welcome the spirit of each culture”. He also called the Anima Mundi Museum “a living home, inhabited by and open to all, with the doors wide open to populations from all over the world”. Through the “beauty and art” gathered together in this house and displayed in “transparency”, it reminds us all of “the value of harmony and peace between peoples and nations”, making “the voice of God resound”.
In 2022, the exhibition areas of the “Americas” and “Africa” were completed, and the new project for the layout of “Asia” and the “Wunderkammer” was initiated.
In August 2024, Nadia Fiussello was appointed Curator of the Anima Mundi Museum. Her career in the Museums has already seen her working as a Ph.D - India and East Asia - in the Asia Section of the Ethnological Museum since 1999 and, since 2013, in the role of Assistant in the Ethnological Department.
The Museum collection is now made up of over 80,000 artefacts and includes, besides objects relating to extra-European ethnography (Africa, Americas, Asia, Oceania), a stone collection with prehistoric flints from all over the world, and a rich collection of Asian coins and artefacts from pre-Columbian civilizations. The collection also includes works of art by contemporary artists and craftsmen who, in donating their creations to the Department and to the Pontiffs, continue to enrich the cultural heritage of the Anima Mundi Museum collection.