Vatican Museums

The Knowing Conserving Sharing series reaches its sixth volume, illustrating the conservation strategies and methods employed by the Ethnological Materials Conservation Laboratory of the Vatican Museums on artefacts belonging to their ethnological collections.
Presented here are several restoration interventions conducted between 2014 and 2022: two rare panels of woven plant fibres (insika) from the Republic of Rwanda, a pre-Columbian anthropomorphic terracotta figure from Colombia, a male anthropomorphic wooden statue from Papua New Guinea, and a valuable Chinese commemorative silk textile.

Each contribution is accompanied by analyses from the Scientific Research Laboratory of the Vatican Museums, whose work is crucial for the accurate identification of the constitutive materials of each artefact and the pigments used.
The concluding chapter is dedicated to the preparation of two North American objects – a ritual shirt used in the Ghost Dance and a painting depicting the Sun Dance – prior to their placement in the new display cases of the Anima Mundi Museum.