Museum

Milano Città Mondo is a project of the City of Milan, Mudec and Ufficio Progetti Interculturali, Reti e Cooperazione, born in 2015. It represents a window on the cultural complexity of the city. Milano Città Mondo promotes transcultural activities with an exhibition and performance character: conferences, readings, workshops and courses are held in the “Khaled al-Asaad Space of Cultures”. Milano Città Mondo, through the urban network of associations, institutions, activists and researchers that it has developed over the years, promotes participatory activities based on the themes of the museum’s current exhibition projects, becoming in effect its public programme.

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MUDEC’s exhibition programme goes beyond the museum’s walls through a series of activities promoted by the Public Art Office: murals, performances and installations reach different areas of the city of Milan. The focus on different forms of urban art is combined with the dissemination of MUDEC’s cultural offer in the territory.

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The Museum of Cultures is developing a provenance research project. In the process of analysing and studying the collections, the museum’s curatorial department analyses the way in which each object was collected and acquired, and reconstructs the contexts underlying changes in ownership and possession.

Among the activities dedicated to provenance, the Guillermo Schmidt Pizarro project, in which Mudec participates along with other international institutions, is of particular importance.

Schmidt Pizarro was a famous collector of Peruvian origin, active in Europe and the United States since the beginning of the 20th century. He sold numerous pre-Hispanic and colonial Peruvian artefacts to the most important museums of his time, sometimes breaking up homogeneous lots. Mudec owns 91 objects acquired by Schmidt Pizarro in the 1930s.

The importance of this research is in line with our museum’s efforts to trace the origin of each artefact in our collections in the name of transparency, in order to restore dignity and context to objects that are valuable for reconstructing the material culture of South American native peoples. 

Project Coordinators:
Carolina Orsini, Anna Antonini and Federica Villa
Information and applications for possible collaboration: c.bibliocultureansando@comune.milano.it
Scientific publications
Life of a Peruvian Art Collector: Guillermo Schmidt Pizarro
Museums on the art market

The “Antonio Raimondi” Archaeological Mission, under the auspices and with the contribution of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, aims to carry out a diachronic research of the relationship between man and environment in the Andes, based on Raimondi’s research.

The naturalist, born in Milan, moved to Peru in 1850, from where he sent some of the finds to the Milan Museum of Natural History, contributing to the formation of the ethnographic collections conserved at MUDEC.

The research began in 1999 and, over time, has covered various geographical areas: the Chacas area (Province of Asunción, Ancash, Peru); the Province of Huari (Peru); the Puruhay Lagoon (Peru, 2006-2012 campaigns); the Brealito/Luracatao area (Province of Salta, Argentina, 2011-2012 campaigns); the Tacuil area and the valley of La Hoyada (2013-2019 campaigns) with the branch of the Qhapaq Ñan, the great Inca road that connected a large part of South American territory before the conquest.

Since 2020, the research team has returned to Peru, once again in the foothills of the Cordillera Blanca, in the Central Andes. Here, excavations began at the large site of Tumshukayko, occupied since 3000 B.C.

The project was supported locally by several indigenous institutions, such as the Unión de los Pueblos de la Nación Diaguita-Salta in Argentina, the Alcaldes of Puruhuay and of Ñawpamarca in Peru. Currently it enjoys the support of the Asociación de los Vecinos of Tumshukayko and the Asociación Caraz Cultura. At an institutional level, partnerships have been established with the Municipality of Hari and, most recently, with the Municipality of Caraz.

International sponsorship was provided by the following institutions: the Italian Embassy in Lima and Buenos Aires, the Italian Institute of Culture in Lima, the Peruvian Ministry of Culture and the Museum of Anthropology in Salta.

Several universities are contributing to the research, including the Free University of Languages and Communication IULM in Milan, the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, the Italian National Research Council (CNR), the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) and the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). Furthermore, several students and scholars from different Italian and Latin American universities have been taking part in the project over the years

Project Coordinator: Carolina Orsini

Visit the mission blog in Spanish
Visit the mission page on the “Italian” website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Map of Colonial Odonymy is the result of historical-archival research commissioned by the Area Museo delle Culture, Progetti interculturali e Arte nello Spazio Pubblico and carried out by the Ferruccio Parri National Institute.

The historians who carried out the research identified around one hundred and fifty streets and squares in Milan’s toponymy named after soldiers, explorers, battles, cities and other places or people linked to Italian colonial history. Thanks to the study of the municipal naming regulations kept in the archives, it has been possible to trace the years and motivations. The list also includes those cultural institutions and monuments that played a central role in the debate on Italian colonialism.

The map is therefore a useful tool for raising awareness of Italian colonial history and its impact on the urban fabric. Mudec has placed this work in a wider panorama of reflection on colonial memories, starting from the dialogue with some personalities of the Habesha community in Milan and from the confrontation, which it wishes to be constant and permanent, with citizens of diasporic and non-diasporic origin on the themes of colonialism.

Link to the map
Press Release
Video of the presentation day