IN THE SHADOW OF THE DOME OF THE BASILICA DI SAN PIETRO. : THE ANIMA MUNDI MUSEUM UNDER MAGNIFYING GLASS

Abstract

This study aims to examine the Anima Mundi Museum in Vatican City through an ethnographic lens. The analysis looks at the circumstances of the founding of the memory institution, highlighting the extent to which the Universal Missionary Exhibition (1925, Rome) and the World’s Fair (1929, Barcelona) helped the establishment and initial efforts of the institution.

I will trace how Pope Pius XI, the founder of the museum, and the Roman popes who succeeded him on the throne, enriched the collection. I will explore the similarities and differences of emphasis between the exhibition logic of the Pontifical Ethnological Missionary Museum and the museum, which re-opened in 2019 under a new name and with a new curatorial concept, the main features of the representational logic, and the role of Pope Francis I in the institutional change of approach.

I will present how the exhibition, which focuses on evangelization work among people outside Europe, has been transformed from a pillar of the Holy See’s representational intentions against nationalist ideology and after the end of the colonial empires, a memory institution reflects the postcolonial turn in the sense of re-mapping and applies 21^st century museum aspects.

I am seeking the answers to the ways in which the institution is able to combine a universal mission history perspective with an ethnological-anthropological approach.  I will explore the place of Anima Mundi, which is part of the Musei Vaticani, in one of the largest and richest museum complexes in the world, and the means of representation that is uses the draw attention to the richness and diversity of civilisations outside Europe, in the context of cross-cultural studies.

Keeping in mind the global-local dichotomy, the museum provides space for interreligious dialogue and intercultural discourse through its material and curatorial concept.