In 1973, the Missionary Ethnological Museum was transferred from the Palace of Saint John Lateran to join the other departments of the Vatican Museums.
The new museum was entrusted to Father Joseph Penkowski, SVD, who devised a new layout, subdivided by continent, in which he emphasized both indigenous cultural and religious aspects, as well as those artefacts born from the encounter of local traditions with Catholicism, which he called “Missionary Synthesis”.
Don Roberto Zagnoli, who arrived in 1996, dedicated himself to the care and conservation of the collections – instituting the Ethnological Materials Restoration Laboratory and collaborating with numerous Italian and foreign scholars - as well as to the study of the collections in order to form the museum's database: the filing system which has now merged into the new Collective Access system for museums. During his tenure, he was also committed to making the collections known internationally, participating in numerous prestigious exhibitions in Italy and abroad.
From 2009 to 2023, during the tenure of Father Nicola Mapelli (PIME), the Department was dedicated to a re-connection project with the indigenous populations, and the complete renewal of the display spaces.
The search for the origins of the objects allowed Father Mapelli, over the course of several study trips, to be able to meet the descendants of those who had produced or collaborated in the sending of artefacts for the Vatican Missionary Exposition in 1925.
The year 2019 saw the inauguration of the “Oceania” section, characterized by its innovative museographic aspect, where the objects seem to be suspended and immediately usable by the visitor. On 18 October 2019, the Museum had the privilege of hosting the Holy Father, who on that occasion called the renewed cultural reality a “living home”.
In December 2022, the exhibition areas dedicated to the “Americas” and “Africa” were inaugurated.

Nadia Fiussello - Curator of the Department for the Ethnological Collections and the first woman in history to direct the Museum - is currently working on the setting up of the “Asia” section with a project that, in harmony with the rest of the museum, is intended to place special emphasis on certain iconographic aspects, such as the “Forest of Buddhas” where Buddhist statues from all over Asia will be displayed for a stylistic comparison of iconic representations of the Buddha.
Since 2023, the Department has expanded its staff with two assistants: Romina Cometti for the “Americas” and Jean-François Genotte for “Africa”.

The Department, with its more than 80,000 objects from all over the world (Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania) and covering a time span that ranges from the Palaeolithic to the present day thanks to the gifts received (including those offered to the various Popes), continues to be a “living” department enriched by “new” and contemporary art forms.