Investigating the Reinstallation of the Museo Coloniale di Roma: A Microcosm of Italian Colonial Memory

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Investigating the Reinstallation of the Museo Coloniale di Roma:

A Microcosm of Italian Colonial Memory

Student Number: 11368225 Master’s Degree Thesis: Heritage and Memory Studies University of Amsterdam First Reader: Dr Chiara de Cesari Second Reader: Dr Tamara van Kessel Date of Completion: 30th May 2018

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Figure 1: Map of Italian Empire, 1939 (Brien Garnand). Source: Ben-Ghiat and Fuller 2005: xxii ... 21 Figure 2: Indigenous people in costume guarding the entrance of the exhibition. Screenshots of the footage of the inauguration of the Esposizione di Arte Coloniale (Colonial Art Exhibition) in Rome. Source: Archivio Storico Luce 1931. ... 28 Figure 3: Indigenous people in costume guarding the entrance of the exhibition. Screenshots of the footage of the inauguration of the Esposizione di Arte Coloniale (Colonial Art Exhibition) in Rome. Source: Archivio Storico Luce 1931. ... 29 Figure 4:Indigenous people performing daily activities in the colonial pavilion in the Esposizione di Arte Coloniale (Colonial Art Exhibition) in Rome. Screenshots of the footage of the inauguration. Source: Archivio Storico Luce 1931. ... 29 Figure 5: Indigenous people performing daily activities in the colonial pavilion in the Esposizione di Arte Coloniale (Colonial Art Exhibition) in Rome. Screenshots of the footage. Source: Archivio Storico Luce 1931... 30 Figure 6:Indigenous village in the ‘Italian Oriental Africa’ (A.O.I) recreated at the Triennale Exhibition of Overseas Lands 1940. Source: Labanca (1992:59). ... 30 Figure 7:The view of one of the entrances of the Colonial Exhibition in Genova in 1914 (Photo from Lucchesi 1914). Source: Finauri (2017). ... 32 Figure 8: The view of the colonial sector. The tower on the left-hand side corner is the reproduction of the Torre di Galata. Source: Finauri (2017) ... 32 Figure 9: Mosque reproduction inside the Colonial Exhibition with a cannon taken by the Italian army during the Ain Zara battle in 1911. Source: Finauri (2017) ... 33 Figure 10: The entrance of the Colonial Museum in 1937 – the Zoo Garden entrance side. Source: From Gandolfo (2014: 124). ... 34 Figure 11: The hall of the Adwa Cannons. Source: Labanca (1992:111). ... 36 Figure 12: Memorial statues of the Konso people carved from wood currently kept in the deposit at the Luigi Pigorini National Museum (photograph by the author). ... 37 Figure 13: A fur coat made from Somalian leopard fur, with the Italian brand label demonstrating its commercial benefit (photograph by the author). ... 39

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vi Figure 14: Shoes made from leather obtained from the Italian colonies (photograph by the author). ... 39 Figure 15: Casapound’s propagandic advertisement against the closure of the Museo d’Arte Orientale. Source: Scianca (2017). ... 50 Figure 16: Arial view of the Luigi Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and

Ethnography in the EUR in the 1960s. Source: arti.beniculturali.it (2017). ... 55 Figure 17: Piazza Guglielmo Marconi (photograph by the author). ... 57 Figure 18:The ground plan of Asmara, dated 1916, showing racial segregation with a colour scheme. The winding course of the river Mai Bela and Mussolini Avenue in the north-east part. Source: Volgger and Graf (2017:157). ... 58 Figure 19: Fascist style facade of the Museo delle Civiltà in Piazza Guglielmo

Marconi, Rome (photograph by the author). ... 59 Figure 20: First floor of the Luigi Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and

Ethnography, showing the Oceania and Prehistory Halls located next to each other. 63 Figure 21: Africa Hall at the Museo delle Civiltà (photograph by the author). ... 69 Figure 22: Africa Hall at the Museo delle Civiltà (photograph by the author). ... 70 Figure 23: Showcase of tribal sculptures in Africa Hall, Museo delle Civiltà

(photograph by the author). ... 70 Figure 24: Picture exhibited at Africa Hall, Museo delle Civilta (photograph by the author). ... 71 Figure 25: View of Ocean Hall at the Museo delle Civiltà (photograph by the author). ... 71 Figure 26: View of Ocean Hall at the Museo delle Civiltà (photograph by the author). ... 72 Figure 27: Text describing the life of the explorers (photograph by the author). ... 76 Figure 28: Royal apparel, jewellery and crowns and equestrian parachutes are part of Negus Menelik’s donation to King Vittorio Emanuele III (photograph by the author). ... 78

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vii Figure 29: Congolese tribal sculptures at the Luigi Pigorini Museum of Ethnography and Prehistory (photograph by the author). ... 79 Figure 30: Accompanying text describing the Congolese tribal sculptures called the “Magic Sculptures” (photograph by the author). ... 79 Figure 31: Text at the entry of the exhibition (photograph by the author). ... 89 Figure 32:Painting of the ‘Market in Asmara’ (1931-195) by Maurizio Rava

(photograph by the author). ... 90 Figure 33: Painting of an Arab market (1920 ca) by Gino Albieri (photograph by the author). ... 90 Figure 34: Eritrean Jewelery (photograph by the author)... 91 Figure 35: Objects from the colonies (photograph by the author). ... 91 Figure 36: Overview of a section of the Impressioni d’Africa exhibition (Photograph by the author). ... 92 Figure 37: Furnishings and Carpets from Ethiopia and Libya (Photograph by the author). ... 92 Figure 38:Overview of the section dedicated to the archaeological excavations of the Roman ancient town Leptis Magna (photograph by the author). ... 93 Figure 39: Portrait of the Negus Menelik by Augusto Valli 1891 (photograph by the author). ... 94 Figure 40:Portrait of a Somaliland chief by Giuseppe Rondini 1931 (photograph by the author). ... 95 Figure 41: Portrait of a female Arab by Mario Ridola, 1917 (photograph by the

author). ... 96 Figure 42: Portrait of Eritrean women by Laurenzio Laurenzi 1930 (photograph by the author). ... 97

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1 Introduction

Through an investigation into the history of the Museo Coloniale di Roma, this thesis aims to explore what the remaking of colonial heritage today tells us about the changing collective and subjective nature of Italian memory about colonialism. The Museo Coloniale di Roma is an interesting case study because it has been firstly represented as an instrument of political propaganda for the fascist regime. Further, its history after decolonisation can be seen as a microcosm of the broader Italian politics around colonial memory, moving from forgetting to aphasia which is the term to describe the current inability to speak the truth about pasts events (Stoler 2011). Many scholars have demonstrated that in spite of the official disavowal of the colonial past, memories of that time still persist in the collective conscience (Andall 2005; Labanca 2003; Ponzanesi 2016). Therefore, the history of the Museo Coloniale di Roma after decolonisation simultaneously represents denial and memorialization. In fact, the societal neglect that occurred after decolonisation made, the museum a key site for the enactment of this oblivion; by contrast, the preservation and current restoration of its collections made it a site of remembrance.

This thesis, hence, writes the history of the Museo Coloniale di Roma, and how this institution has been influenced by the various political phases since colonial times. Furthermore, it attempts to understand how the Museo delle Civiltà, where one large part of the collection is preserved, is dealing with this difficult colonial past, and how they are trying to imagine the reinstallation of the Museo Coloniale in a postcolonial fashion.

The Museo Coloniale di Roma was opened in Rome in 1923. Throughout its history, it has changed names several times, merging with other cultural institutions in accordance with the political, social and historical context of the time. The museum was closed in 1971, and its collection was hidden away in precarious conditions in a deposit for over forty years. Since 2011, the objects that were once part of this collection have been conserved in the archive of the Luigi Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome (Di Lella 2017). The act of hiding colonial

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2 collections for nearly fifty years can be seen as an attempt to remove the memory of an embarrassing past, and it has increased the Italians’ incapability of openly and critically talking about such a violent past.

The Museo Coloniale di Roma once displayed eleven thousand objects, in thirty-five rooms, mainly originating from Ethiopia, including archaeological artefacts,

paintings, wooden sculptures, weapons and engravings made by the Italian artists who lived in the colonies, and also an important photography and film section (Castelli 1992; Gandolfo 2014). Despite this triumphal perspective of the past, the original scope and narrative of the museum, and the way in which the collection was amassed, has been a problematic one. Military officers and unscrupulous explorers amassed a totally eclectic collection, of scarce ethnographic value, with the purpose of

accentuating African indigenous inferiority. The aim of this museum was to instruct Italians about their colonial might and civilisational power in Africa while implicitly building national pride and colonial awareness within Italian society (Palma 2018). Even though the collection is currently conserved in the Museo delle Civiltà (in the building of the former Luigi Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and

Ethnography), given its marginal role from post-war era until today, the museum has been defined as‘The Ghost Museum’ (Gandolfo 2014). A museum collection that exists, that is preserved but it is not visible or accessible to the public.

The new Museo delle Civiltà has recently started a process of reshaping this heritage in the reinstallation of a New Museo Coloniale in 2020. The exhibition, recently inaugurated at the Museo delle Civiltà displaying part of Museo Coloniale’s collection, aims to unveil the Italian colonial heritage and start a discussion on this topic. However, the ambiguous narrative of this exhibition offers an example of the current reconfiguring of Italy’s colonial memory described by Triulzi as:

A sort of ‘pendulum’ oscillating between an all-out desire to forget and the nostalgic recollection of a past which is selectively remembered and re-enacted to suit Italy’s new role in the postcolonial age. (Triulzi 2006:430)

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3 This exhibition also demonstrates that although Italy still has to do a great deal of work to reckon with its colonial past, the mantra of forgetting is no longer the right approach; it is only one part of this memory dynamic (Triulzi 2006). Currently, the colonial past is no longer silenced or forgotten but, ‘its memory is now openly exhibited in ambiguous displacements’ (Triulzi 2006:432). The consequence is that this colonialist legacy frames present issues surrounding migrants from countries with which Italy has had no colonial ties.

Therefore, the culture department’s commitment, through the Museo delle Civiltà, to render this heritage visible to the public again could finally represent an opportunity not only for ‘keeping alive visions and images of the colonial past in the present’ (Lombardi-Diop 2017:271), but also to re-contextualise such memories in a more inclusive way.

Outline of chapters

In order to draft the case study examined in this thesis within a theoretical framework, theories and academic works regarding colonial memory and forgetting, postcolonial museum displays and museums as instruments of power and cultural hegemony (Faucault & Gramsci in Bennett 1988) will be presented in Chapter One.

Furthermore, to place this case study in a historical context, a brief timeline of facts and features of Italian colonial history will be outlined.

Italian involvement in the colonial project started late and was hesitant (Labanca 1992; Labanca 2005; Labanca 2003). Therefore, a colonialist consciousness had to be forged throughout the second half of the nineteenth century to build consensus for the project. A visual culture presented though exhibitions was crucial to the process of mass communication (Labanca 2002:13). Chapter Two, first of all, looks at the role colonial exhibitions had in this process; secondly, the analysis of the Museo Coloniale as a fascist propaganda tool aims to understand this museum’s role in the construction of Italian identity, and what traces it has left in the modern perception of the other.

Chapter Three examines the history of the old Museo Coloniale, now the Museo dell’Africa Italiana, from the immediate aftermath of the end of colonialism until the early twenty-first century. The chapter investigate the choice of hiding such an

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4 important and rich collection in a deposit. This act can be seen as an attempt to

remove the memory of an embarrassing past which highlights the long-standing process of forgetting and denial that has characterised Italian politics of colonial memory.

Chapter Four will investigate how the Luigi Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography , now Museo delle Civiltà, has been dealing with the memory of the Italian colonial past. A site analysis of Africa Hall also aims to show how in Italy even cultural institutions that have started the important process of decolonisation and social inclusion still struggle to retrieve both ‘conceptual and lexical vocabularies’ (Stoler 2011:125) to describe its involvement in this dark past. In fact, in this thesis, it is argued that the Museo delle Civiltà represents an example of ‘cultural aphasia’ (Stoler 2011).

Chapter Five examines the contemporary process the Museo delle Civiltà is going through in its planning and creation of what could be deemed a second life for the long-hidden Museo Coloniale. Accordingly, the analysis will focus on how the Museo delle Civiltà intends to reshape its colonial heritage with the aim of using the museum as a space for historical reconciliation. Therefore in this chapter it will be analysed an exhibition recently inaugurated at the Museo delle Civiltà, displaying part of the Museo Coloniale’s collection and the project of another exhibition that aims to unveil the Italian colonial heritage and to start a discussion on this topic. colonial past, is still an open question; the Museo delle Civiltà and Rossana di Lella, in particular, have a very challenging task ahead in their future.

Methodology

In order to answer to the research questions, this thesis implements secondary literature, the in-depth interviewing method and the site analysis method. The

literature review has been used to analyse the history of the Museo Coloniale and the colonial exhibitions. The books of Francesca Gandolfo Il Museo Coloniale di Roma (1904-1971): Fra le Zebra nel Paese dell’Olio di Ricino and L’Africa in Vetrina, edited by Labanca, have provided the basis of the historical research regarding the museum and its vicissitudes during different historical phases.

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5 However, due to the lack of written information and archival evidence regarding the museum collection after the decolonisation period (1970-2000), further information had to be gathered through an interview with Alessandra Cardelli and Silvana Palma. There are three types of interview techniques: structured, semi-structured and

unstructured interviews (Bernard 2006). For this research, the unstructured, in-depth technique was found to be the most appropriate method. This method allows the research to remain exploratory in nature, enabling the thesis to look in an in-depth way into unknown or unexpected insights. Alessandra Cardelli and Alessandra Palma have both been involved, in different ways, with the collection of Museo Coloniale during the period it belonged to the IsIao. In fact, Cardelli was a member of the Instituto Italo-Africano and Palma carried out research on the photographic fond belonged to the Museo Coloniale collection. Cardelli and Palma were one of the few people that had the chance to access this collection during the years of hiding.

Cardelli has worked for over twenty years at the Luigi Pigorini National Museum and Ethnography of Rome and she was one of the curators that created the African Hall exhibition in the 1990s. For this reason, her interview has offered significant information with which to understand how the hall was designed, its meaning and narrative. With this in mind, questions were asked on the motivation and aims behind the selection of topics, the basis on which the objects were chosen or excluded and the intended audience. The second curator, Egidio Costa, who could have offered a different point of view, was also contacted, but he was not available to be interviewed.

Furthermore, in order to gather information on the reorganisation that led to the new Museo delle Civiltà and on the future plans for the installation of the Museo

Coloniale, an interview with the curator Rossana di Lella has been carried out. The anthropologist Rossana di Lella is the Museo delle Civiltà’s curator that will be in charge of the reinstallation of the Museo Coloniale. Because the Museo delle Civiltà is in a transition phase, and there is a general opacity in terms of the Italian public administration funding and projects, no official written materials, such as an Annual Report, could be found on the museum website. As such, the research on primary data had to rely on information provided by the interview with Rossana di Lella and the

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6 Director of the Museo delle Civiltà, Filippo Maria Gambari. This last interview was extremely useful since it enabled a thorough analysis into his positionality and the challenges concerning the curatorship of a colonial museum. However, the Director requested that the two curators, Di Lella and Del Pino, assist during his interview. This request together with Egidio Cossa’s denial to be asked questions not only about African Hall, but also on the temporary exhibition ‘Africa Impressions’ that he has curated show a certain uneasiness to openly and critically discuss issues on colonial displays in post-colonial Italy.

The primary information gathered was used in conjunction with the museum analysis method. The museum analysis is a ‘methodological framework that will help to research on the knowledge-making capacity’ (Moser 2010:22) of the Luigi Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnograph, and it will enable this thesis to investigate how the new temporary exhibitions recently organised at the Museo delle Civiltà create new meanings within Italian colonial history. Therefore, critical observations on the Africa Hall display environment, including design, colours and lights are presented. In fact, as Moser (2010) points out, the look of the display is fundamental because it can contextualise or alternatively contrast with the theme of the exhibition. Moreover, an analysis of the textual accompaniments will help to analyse how the Museo delle Civiltà is currently dealing with the Italian colonial past.

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7 CHAPTER ONE

Theory Framework and Historiography

1.0 Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to outline the theoretical framework for the case study, taking into account the relevant academic literature on colonial memory, postcolonial museum displays and museums, and the way in which they can be used as tools for wielding power over a cultural remembering or forgetting.

First of all, I will analyse theoretical approaches regarding memory and forgetting because they are useful for situating the Italian colonial past. Particularly, I will look at theories of forgetting since the politics of Italian memory following colonisation has been characterised mainly by a long-standing denial and suppression (Del Boca 2003a; Palma 2017; Ponzanesi 2016). Therefore, the complex historical relationship between Italy and its colonial past will also be examined. This chapter will further investigate the discourse regarding the predicament of displaying the colonial past in postcolonial ethnographic museums.

As the the former Museo Coloniale di Roma will be reinstalled in a new Museo delle Civiltà, I will explore the literature regarding ways in which the colonial heritage has been (or could be) revitalised in postcolonial times to conserve the memory of the colonial period.

In order to understand the role of the museum as an institution, I will discuss theories regarding the museum’s ‘dispositif’ (Foucault 1972) in relation to political

dominance, cultural hegemony and mechanisms of power. Finally, to place this case study in a historical context, a brief timeline of the facts and features of Italian colonial history will be outlined.

1.1 Memory Theories

Analysing theoretical approaches to memory and forgetting, it is useful, first of all, to look at the meaning of a ‘contested past’. According to Hodgkin and Radstone (2003), a contested past can be considered as the relationship between the past and the present

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8 with the involvement of historical and political issues. However, these authors argue that the aim of contestation does not include conflicting versions of a past event; it is more about the query of who owns this past and ‘what is entitled to speak for the past in the present’ (Hodgkin & Radstone 2003:9). Thus, frequent representation and memorialisation practices become a matter of conflict. For instance, ‘memorials and museums represent public statements about what the past has been, and how the present should acknowledge it; who should be remembered, who should be forgotten […]; what gets respected, what neglected’ (Hodgkin & Radstone 2003:25). Therefore, these public institutions could become a reason for contestation and acrimony

themselves.

Although the debates around this subject are partially historical, memory occupies a central space. In fact, as Hodgkin and Radstone (2003) highlight, history regards the present, but so does memory and, it does so in a much more direct way. More specifically, they claim that ‘memory is still live and active, still charged with the weight of these contests’ (Hodgkin & Radstone 2003:10).

Memory dynamics and the ways in which different histories are explained can be a complex process. As part of the memory dynamics, nevertheless, the concept of forgetting plays a significant role in the memorialisation of the past. However, in memory studies, a much smaller literature has been dedicated to forgetting than memory although when forgetting is investigated, it is given great importance (Bijl 2012). A number of thinkers and scholars have worked on ‘forgetting’ and offered interesting reflections and contributions on the theorisation of this concept. Passerini (2003), an Italian scholar who has published largely on themes of memory, reflects on the meanings and dilemmas about silence and oblivion, and on the ambivalent power of memory and forgetting.

Firstly, Passerini (2003) offers an explanation on the subtle differences between oblivion and forgetting. Oblivion is a word with roots in the Latin ‘oblivusci’ (Passerini 2003:332), which has links with the Italian word ‘oblio’, still in common use today. In English, the word used is ‘forgetting’. However, as Passerini (2003:332) highlights, even though the two terms have a corresponding meaning, whether

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9 oblivion indicates a state of mind, forgetting indicates ‘a process which can take place at various levels, and which includes daily life more easily’ than the word oblivion.

Passerini (2003:333) offers a definition of silence: ‘to indicate what is pre-and post- sound’ and ‘the space where speech is located’. Nevertheless, for her, confusion might arise when silence and oblivion are examined as narration, either oral or written. For instance, a historical event or a fact might be omitted because ‘its memory has been repressed-by trauma’ (Passerini 2003:333), it either conflicts with the present or the the social and political prerequisites are notably absent. If these conditions change, the memories might break through the silence; otherwise, the latter could last for a long time, hence leading to oblivion. As such, scholars dealing with the process of remembering and forgetting need to search for a relationship between the traces and their absence, and to attempt an interpretation that allows for the creation of new associations (Passerini 2003).

Passerini (2003:338), drawing from European events (including colonial history), analyses ‘silence as repression of memory and imposed amnesia’. In fact, authorities might prefer to remain silent about violent events to hide their own responsibility. Accordingly, governments and state institutions are often responsible for collective amnesia, which can lead to the process of forgetting. In some instances, she notes, imposed silence and oblivion have even significantly affected the actors directly involved in the events. Passerini (2003) further explores the fundamental connection between individual and collective memory. As she explains, the complex

interconnection between silence, memory and forgetting is significantly influenced by the role an individual, and their personal interpretation, plays in implementing a collective sense of the past.

The British Anthropologist Paul Connerton (2008:59), in an attempt to clarify the meaning of different types of actions that are usually all grouped under the single term to forget, distinguishes seven types of forgetting: 1) repressive erasure; 2) prescriptive forgetting; 3) forgetting that is constitutive in the formation of a new identity; 4) structural amnesia; 5) forgetting as annulment; 6) forgetting as planned obsolescence; 7) forgetting as humiliated silence. He argues that in the debate on

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10 cultural memory, forgetting is often seen as a failure. However, as ‘forgetting is not a unitary phenomenon’, according to Connerton (2008:59), this assumption is not necessarily true. Nevertheless, in the book How Modernity Forgets, he debates whether ‘modernity has a particular problem with forgetting’ (Connerton 2009:10). This is due to a number of factors: ‘superhuman speed, megacities that are so

enormous as to be unmemorable and unwalkable, consumerism disconnected from the labour process, the short lifespan of urban architecture’ (Connerton 2009:14). This fact leads to easily forget our past and particularly difficult contested memories. As such, Connerton (2008:60) offers a dichotomous view where memory is repeatedly ‘eliminated’ and ‘consigned to oblivion’ .

The ‘binary logic operative’ of memory and forgetting has been widely accepted by many scholars (Bijl 2012:444). In other words, the predominant idea is that because ‘memory is highly selective’ (Assmann 2008:97), remembering involves forgetting something else at the same time. Authors, such as Assmann (2008), Gross (2000) and Augé (2004) offer a similar binary thinking about remembering and forgetting (Bijl 2012:444). Although these dichotomous theories can be useful for certain situations, they are not applicable to the cases in which colonial memory is a simultaneous act of remembering and forgetting. For this reason, the theorising works of Stoler (2011) and Bijl (2012) offer an interesting contribution to the colonial memory debate.

Stoler’s (2011) attempts to overcome the fixed ideas around oblivion and forgetting lead to the creation of her idea of ‘colonial aphasia’. Her work on colonial aphasia sees the historical notion of forgetting in a different way. The concept of aphasia indicates a disassociation that runs so deep that colonial history becomes unspeakable. Moreover, if amnesia is the absence of memory, aphasia is the incapability of

‘retrieving both conceptual and lexical vocabularies’ (Stoler 2011:125) to address a topic. Stoler (2011) examines the relationship between French society and colonial history looking at the example of the rise in French racial violence towards Algerians. Using this case study, Stoler (2011:145) argues that aphasia highlights – in a more effective way than forgetting - important aspects of the relationships existing between historical production, the migration question and ‘the absence/presence of colonial relations’. Furthermore, Stoler (2011:145) emphasises that there is limited access to

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11 colonial history in the ambiguous presence and absence of a certain subject matter and, the ‘presence and the misrecognition of it’. This is highly relevant for the

discussion in this thesis about the relationship between Italian society and its colonial past, and how this still has an impact on the migratory question and the current perception of immigrants.

Bijl (2012), looking at aphasia in the context of the Dutch cultural memory of

colonialism, introduces the concept of ‘memorability’. Bilj (2012: 444) defines this as ‘the degree to which a past is memorable, easy to remember’. Hence, this theory proposes the notion of gradation, which means that the question is no longer if there is memory, ‘but how there is memory’ (Bijl 2012: 444). The introduction of this concept helps to move further away from the dichotomy between memory and forgetting. However, according to Bijl (2012), aphasia has a direct connection to memorability: ‘the lack of language inhibits the production of a memorable past’. Moreover, Bijl (2012), through an examination of colonial memory in the Netherlands, adds to Stoler’s (2011) aphasia theory by highlighting two particular situations. In the first one, ‘a certain vocabulary does not exist’, and in the second, ‘the conditions for expressing a certain vocabulary do not exist’ (Bijl 2012:449). In other words, for him, there are cases where people recognise certain issues, ‘but collectively decide not to speak about them’ (Bijl 2012:450).

1.1.1 Italian Colonial Memory

The complex historical relationship with colonialism has not been easily discussed in Italy. Over the last sixty years, there has been an attempt to cover up the atrocities of its imperial past, evident from the fact that Italian colonialism has not received adequate attention in its academic literature. The lack of study and discussion, combined with the failure to openly condemn colonialisation’s most violent aspects, have induced Italy’s general amnesia of its colonial faults (Del Boca 2003). Del Boca identifies the dismissive attitude of the governing class, who not only refused to promote a serious and broad debate on colonialism’s past, but who actively tried to prevent the idea that ‘the emergence of truth’ (Del Boca 2003:18) was one of the main reasons behind the oblivion of the Italian general public.

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12 For instance, in the post-war period, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs promoted the publication of fifty volumes called Italy in Africa (Del Boca 2003). The massive and costly work intended to provide an assessment of the Italian presence in the Horn of Africa and Northern Africa. However, the result of this contribution was a

mystification of the Italian colonial experience, and it offered an ‘impudently falsified account’ (Del Boca 2003:18). In fact, the publication’s overall narrative depicted Italian colonialism as different from other contemporary colonialism. It is not the case that the myth of ‘Italian colonialism as different, more tolerant, and more humane than other colonialisms’ (Del Boca 2003:20) is still present in the collective imagination. It has to be kept in consideration, however, that the publishing was supervised by former colonial governors or high officials that in past had been working for the no longer existing Ministry of Italian Africa. (Del Boca 2003). More to the point, even the scholars that contributed to this work were in favour of

colonialism.

The committee that worked on this publication produced a work that omitted the many crimes committed by the Italian soldiers during the wars of conquest and the years of domination. First of all, the fact that the colonised population paid a high price since they were stripped of their own cultural and national identities was notably absent. An example of such violence is the decimation of the Coptic Church as a revenge operation after the attempt on Graziani’ s life in 1937; the operation was guided by General Maletti and provoked the death of 1,200 deans and priests (Del Boca 2004).

Moreover, there was no mention of the large utilisation of chemical weapons in Ethiopia between 1935 and 1940 or of the deportation in concentration camps. Besides, some of the current concentration camps used nowadays are located on exactly the same sites as colonial times (Leogrande 2017). Eritrean refugees that disembarked in Italy reported having been subjected to torture practices, which are known to prisoners in Italy as: Ferro, Otto, Gesù Cristo. Those names have been passed along from the dominion by yesterday’s and today’s prisoners.

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13 Absolute silence was also maintained on the extermination of the Libyan population while defending their motherland between 1920 and 1932 (Del Boca 2003). In 1932, when Marshal Pietro Badoglio announced that the “rebellion had been completely and definitively crushed”, he declared that 100,000 were killed (Graziani 1932 in Del Boca 2003:26). As Del Boca highlighted, considering that in 1920 the Libyan population was about 800,000, it means that that one-eighth of the population was slaughtered (Del Boca 2003:26).

Over the last twenty-five years, the studies on Italian Colonialism have had significant improvements in offering a more innovative historiography, but for very many years the results have been fragmentary. The poverty of academic research is due to the difficulties of accessing the national archives of the colonial past (Del Boca 2003; Labanca 2005; Passerini 2003). Moreover, the most important colonial diplomatic and military archives were available exclusively for the old colonialist lobby that certainly had no intention of condemning the wrongdoings of Italian colonialism. As Del Boca (2003) points out, the silence together with the failure to denounce the most inhumane aspects of the Italian colonialism have promoted Italy’s denial of its colonial past.

Nonetheless, despite the obstacles preventing access to the archives, in the late 1990s, there were significant improvements in the studies on Italian colonialism (Labanca 2005). Those years have been a period of great political transformation in Italy, Africa and the world in general (Labanca 2005); scholars, such as Rochart, Malgeri,

Labanca, Palma, Procacci and Triulzi have produced an innovative historiography using new research methods and offering a new interpretation of this past. Certainly, as Del Boca (2003:20) underlines, these contributions have positively altered ‘the collective imaginary’ regarding the Italian occupation, but more importantly for Africa and the Africans. Nevertheless, the myth of Italian colonialism being more tolerant and more humane than other colonialists persists in Italian public opinion (Del Boca 2003; Labanca 2005).

Palma and Ellena further assert that Italian colonial memory in the post war era has been marked by a long-standing failure to come to terms with its colonial past (Ellena 2003; Palma 2007; Palma 2017). The main reasons that have prevented Italy from

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14 confronting its colonial past can been identified in the way that the colonial

experience results in a failure to convict war criminals (Palma 2017; Ellena 2003; Labanca 2002; Andall & Duncan 2005). Therefore, due to the way in which the Italian colonial experience finished, decolonisation, for a protracted period, was not experienced and its implications were never discussed (Andall & Duncan 2005). In fact, Italy lost its colonies as a result of an international agreement after the defeat suffered in the Second World War (Palma 2017; Ellena 2003; Labanca 2005). Consequently, Italy never had to deal with any dispute or negotiation with the colonised countries that were ‘struggling for self-determination and independence’ (Palma 2017:94) at the stage of decolonisation. Therefore, as Andall and Duncan (2005:18) state, the ‘timing and nature of decolonization has contributed to the legacy of colonialism’ and to a feeling of nostalgia for the colonies, particularly in the

immediate aftermath of the war. Furthermore, Ellena (2003:93) suggests that Italian colonial memories are tightly intermingled with the controversial memories of fascism that have obscured colonial memories.

Ellena (2001) notes that although in Italy the memory of this experience has been termed as ‘repressed memory’ (Burgio 1999 in Ellena 2001:42), ‘frozen’ is the best description of its peculiar character. Indeed, Italians have a frozen vision of ‘Italy as a benignly incompetent nation which led to the denial of racism and violence as active components of Italian colonial rule in East Africa’ (Ellena 2001:42).

Andall and Duncan (2005), additionally argue that this repression has been generally interpreted as ascribable to a process of wilfully forgetting or as a fact that remains silenced in the public sphere. Nevertheless, in their book Italian Colonialism, Legacy and Memory, they aim to illustrate how Italian colonialism is actually remembered and memorialised, and how its legacy endures to affect contemporary issues both in Italy and in the former colonies. For instance, Volgger and Graf (2017:8) point out that research on Italian colonialism nowadays appears to be more entrenched and ‘multifaceted’ than before. Within the framework of postcolonial studies, Italian and Anglophone scholars have been approaching this theme from different angles, paying attention to various aspects of contemporary Italian literature and culture, such as ‘migration, postcoloniality, orality, diaspora ethnicity, multiculturalism, nationhood

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15 and subalternity’ (Volgger & Graf 2017:8). Nevertheless, many elements remain unexplored, especially those related to the history of culture. For this reason,

currently, the memory of Italian colonialism remains ‘scattered and weak’ (Labanca 2005:29), both at an institutional and social level (Palma 2017; Volgger & Graf 2017).

On a similar line, Triulzi (2006:432) suggests that nowadays the colonial past is no longer silenced or forgotten, but ‘its memory is now openly exhibited in ambiguous displacements’. With this statement, Triulzi (2006) alludes to the dislocation of these memories to other spheres of society that retain the colonial legacy even if not

directly. For example, the colonialist legacy frames issues surrounding migrants from countries with which Italy had no colonial ties. In fact, the migration of these African and Albanian migrants over the last thirty years has, first of all, challenged the imperial memory of the nation, but more importantly, it has aroused new instances of the national pride, ‘aggressive identity-affirming impulses’ (Palma 2017:95) or a general perception of ‘self-advancement which sustained the colonial ‘dream’ of pre-war Italian citizens’ (Isnenghi 1991 in Triulzi 2006: 434). Triulzi’s idea of dislocation can be related to one of the features of ‘colonial aphasia’ identified by Stoler (2001): the difficulty of associating the appropriate concepts and memories with appropriate things and events. Hence, using Stoler’s concept, this dislocation of memory is due to the difficulty of understanding ‘the enduring relevancy of what has already been spoken’ (Stoler 2011:121).

Many scholars (Palumbo 2003; Lombardi-Diop 2017; Palma 2017; Triulzi 2006; Ellena 2003; Iyob 2005) pay attention to the issues related to the impact of colonial legacy on contemporary immigration issues. Italians increasingly perceive refugees as the cause of crime and for their difficulty in finding a job. The ‘other’ is often seen as an invader and a threat. As Palma (2017) highlights, the refugee influx has revived the question of relations with ‘the African otherness’, and so clearly the colonial legacy determines relations with the other. Unfortunately, as Andall (2005:201) points out, trends in Italian immigration policy and the positions of the right-wing parties recall colonial strategies that tried to control ‘the hierarchical boundaries between colonizers and colonized’. Moreover, well-established politicians who believe in the imperial

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16 supremacy of the white Westerner over Africans legitimise the spreading of everyday racism in Italy.

1.1.2 Colonial Memory in Postcolonial Museums

In recent years, several museum professionals and scholars (Boursiquot 2016; Legene 2014; Bodenstein 2016; De Angelis 2016) have explored the ways in which the colonial heritage has been (or could be) revitalised in postcolonial times to conserve the memory of the colonial period.

In analysing case studies of museums and heritage sites, scholars, including

Jeychandran (2016), treat museums as places of memory or rather lieux de memoire (Nora 1989). Nora defines lieux de memoire as places that ‘anchor, condense, and express the exhausted capital of our collective memory’ (Nora 1989:24). Nora also observes, whereas history is related more tightly to events, ‘memory attaches itself to sites’ (Nora 1989:22). Therefore, museums can be seen as visible anchors for memory where ‘memory crystallizes and secrets its self’ (Nora 1989: 7). As such, ethnography and historical museums can be seen as lieux de memoire that preserve the memory of colonialism and the heritage sites that play ‘a role in contemporary production and circulation of selected memories of the colonial past’ (Jeychandran 2016:100).

However, Jeychandran (2016:100) points out that in order to change the romanticised vision people have towards colonialism, the institution of the museum should be critically revised as a space of cultural production that does not reinforce and

reproduce only certain memories of colonialism, ‘but also generate[s] a new discourse on colonialism’.

1.2 National Museums of Ethnography in Postcolonial Europe

If museums are seen as places of memory intended to preserve the narratives of a colonial past, the way these narratives, and so memories, are produced and their ‘discursive trajectory’ need to be critically investigated (Chambers et al. 2016:100).

However, first of all, it has to be pointed out that when referring to postcolonial discourse, as highlighted by Chambers et al. (2016:29), the prefix ‘post’ does not refer to what comes after, but to an on-going critical discussion that intends to deconstruct

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17 Western hegemony, disclose and divulge the consequences that are currently at the centre of contemporary queries. Hence, because institutions like museums are fundamental in the postcolonial phase, they need to be rethought to unpack colonial discourse (Prakash 2004). As Prakash (2004) argues, colonial ideology and its construction have not completely disappeared and still emerge, often quite imposingly, within the discursive space of the museum.

Boast (2011) argues that the anatomy of the museum seems to be persistently neo-colonial. For him, despite all the ethically engaged works in museum programmes to empower and include indigenous communities, their three main activities, collecting, exhibiting and educating, are ‘leftover colonial competencies’ (Boast 2011:65). Rather than transcending them, these colonial practices have moulded to a neo-colonial world. Hence, instead of representing only a ‘leftover’, these competences should become a new platform on which to develop the relation between the new neo-colonial museum and the ‘ex-neo-colonial other’ (Boast 2011:65). The museum of the twenty-first century needs to confront this neo-colonial legacy, but the key problem lies in the current ‘assumptions and practices that constitute the museum in the past and today’ (Boast 2011:67). Boast is also critical of the Clifford’s view of the

‘museum as a contact zone’ because it is instrumental in concealing even more crucial ‘asymmetries, appropriations, and biases’ (Boast 2011:67). Clifford’ notion of

‘Museums as Contact Zone’ defines ‘ a contact perspective views all culture-collecting strategies as responses to particular histories of dominance, hierarchy, resistance, and mobilization’ (Clifford 1997: 213). Therefore the museum should become a dialogical space for negotiations, cultural exchange and ‘transcultural encounter’ (Mason 2006 in Boast 2011:58). In practical terms, it implies the implementation of inclusionist and collaborative curatorship in which source communities are involved in all aspects of the museum’s activities.

Bennett (1998:212) also challenged Clifford’s contact zone since it seems to have been developed with an overly optimistic stance. Bennett (1988) theorises that the new inclusiveness of museums might represent just another expression of the museum as ‘an instrument of governmentality’.

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18 Boast (2011: 67) suggests, therefore, that the museum seen as a ‘gatekeeper of

authority’, and as ‘the ultimate arbiter of the identity of the object’, it needs to be extensively rethought and reframed. In order to achieve this, museums will have to abandon some of their resources, if necessary even objects, for the benefit of an agenda that goes beyond its activity of ‘knowledge and control’ (Boast 2011:76). Academics and museum professionals, however, are becoming increasingly aware of the need for museums to be less Eurocentric starting from the way that objects are presented through to how programmes are built and the behaviours expected from visitors and staff. Nina Simon, the director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, actively promotes deconstructing and rewriting museum exhibitions through the irrepressible presence and diversity of the ‘other’ narrations. She suggests this effort is essential to make this type of institution relevant to the interests of the entire population and to be social representative.

In the book The Postcolonial Museum, the Arts of Memory and the Pressure of History, several scholars reflect on:

How museums ‘de-colonialise’ themselves, not so much to ingenuously get rid of the burden of the past and the stereotypes of First-Worldism, but rather to undo and radically interrogate the more subtle and widespread mono-cultural perspectives of culture and the encompassing episteme which imbues their language, self-perception and discourses. (Chambers, De Angelis, Iannicello, Orabona & Quadraro 2016:41)

This discussion is particularly important for ethnographic museums. Most European ethnography museums were established in the early stages of colonisation, and in recent decades, they had to rethink their role in a political environment that has radically changed. In some instances, their role was overtly political; hence they were designed to glorify the colonial enterprise, which was presented as a civilising

mission (Legên 2014; MacKenzie, 2011). Their collections were instruments of propaganda for colonial expansion, setting the stage for the economic benefits that European countries could reap from exploiting the colonised territories (Bouttiaux 2010). The independence achieved by the colonies has resulted in an identity crisis for these kinds of museums who had to reconsider their position in contemporary society.

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19 Furthermore, cultural minorities and marginalised communities have increasingly reclaimed their identity recognition all around the world, stimulating ethnography Europeans museums to create new critical views regarding their aims and roles (Mauze & Rostkowski 2007). Many ethnography European museums, such as the Royal Museum for Central Africa of Tevuren, the Museum Volerkunde of Vienna, the Linden-Museum of Stuttgart, the Pitt Rivers Museum of Oxford and several others have begun this reassessment, suggesting ideas for activities and discussions

(Bodestein & Pagani 2017; Bouttiaux 2010). Lebovics (2007) and Mauze and Rostkowski (2007) have analysed the different paths of postcolonial museum

practices and strategies to reshape their colonial heritage and come out of the shadow of their colonial legacy.

Legên (2014) on the subject of human suffering in post-colonial exhibitions, argues that ‘with respect to colonialism and its forms of knowledge as gathered in

ethnographic collections, museums might be in a deadlock’ (2014:104). During colonial times, ethnography had no relation to suffering because it was not perceived as a violence and trauma caused by colonial agency, but as part of civilising historical progress. Hence, for Legên (2014:103), the legacy of colonial ideology that denies suffering is a major embarrassment for many ethnographic museums in Europe. Legên (2014:103) suggests that a way out of this predicament would be to abandon the ethnographic discourse and supplant it with the historical one. Surely, attaching historical meaning to the ethnographic collections would help to ease the burden of the violence involved in the colonisation and decolonisation process from the shoulders of its victims, offering them the recognition they deserve.

1.3 Museum and Politics

Museums, art galleries and the ‘exhibitionary complex' have been used in modern times as a mechanism of power. Bennett, a leading figure in the Australian School of Cultural Policy, examines public museums as cultural institutions. According to Bennett (1988), museums played a crucial role in the formation of the modern state, and they can be considered, among other institutions, as fundamentally educative and civilising agencies. Thus, it can be affirmed that museums, drawing from Gramscian thought, are a cultural hegemonic instrument. In fact, cultural hegemony indicates the ruling group's ability to direct or orient the mentality, symbolic elaboration, lifestyles

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20 and languages of the ‘popular-national mass' so as to establish a more ‘intimate' relationship with them (Francese 2001). In other words, it refers to their capability to build and consolidate their dominant power. Cultural hegemony is, therefore, a fundamental pillar of political hegemony even if it represents only one aspect. It is particularly useful when analysing the use of the past and the different narrations. Baratieri (2010:35) claims that ‘it is the result of the working of hegemony that gives ideas, concept, versions of the past and discourses their strength and resilience’. Competing groups of people have different access to resources fundamental to the dissemination of ideas and specific versions of the past. Certain stakeholders are more powerful than others in asserting their narration and truth.

Foucault, although in different way, has investigated the complicated relationship between knowledge and power. For him, bureaucracies have used the intelligentsia of the social sciences ‘to govern the conduct of conduct of populations'. (Foucault 1991 in Smith 2006:51). The governmentality thesis argues that ‘intellectual knowledge' is essential for governing society, with all its heterogeneity and problems, so that it becomes easier to render ‘the world thinkable, taming its intractable reality by subjecting it to the disciplined analyses of thought' (Rose & Miller 1992 in Smith 2006:51). The Foucauldian theory draws a parallelism between the museum and penitentiary system. In fact, Foucault's interest focuses on the problem of order, seeing museums as a cultural instrument ‘to reduce an ungovernable’ heterogenic population (Bennett 1988:415).

Gramsci and Foucault are both interested in the social mechanisms of power and control, and the museum represents an ‘influential cultural technology’ (Bennett, 1988:419). Put another way, the organisation of the space and relationship between visitor and object was fundamental to the museum for constructing the norms of public conduct and strategies of surveillance.

1.4 Facts and Features of Italian Colonial History

Italy began its colonial empire acquiring the protectorates of Assab in 1882, a few years after the unification in 1870 (Labanca 20002:18). Under the protection of the British government, Italy annexed the port of Massawa in Eritrea on the Red Sea in 1885 (Labanca 2002:18). This first military occupation was instigated after the loss of

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21 Tunis. After France seized Tunis from the Ottoman Empire in 1882, Italy, given the large Italian population settled there, had expected that Tunis would become its colony. However, Tunisia was assigned to France, and this loss instigated a competitive reaction (Fuller 2016).

Figure 1: Map of Italian Empire, 1939 (Brien Garnand). Source: Ben-Ghiat and Fuller 2005: xxii

After the occupation of Eritrea, Italy’s first colony, the colonial lobby’s interests moved towards Somalia. Italy occupied the territory on the south side of the Horn of Africa forming what would become Italian Somaliland. Initially, Italy tried to gain rights to Benadir in this region through negotiations with the Sultan of Zanzibar with the help of the explorer, Antonio Cecchi. Cecchi, Brichetti and other travellers in the 1890s explored a few other internal territories, but Somaliland became officially a colony under the Italian sovereignty by 1905. Between 1903 and 1928, Italy occupied the internal part of Somalia after having tamed militarily several indigenous revolts (Del Boca 2003b).

As for Eritrea, Somalia and Libya, travellers explored the territory long before the actual conquest. As Atkinson (2005) highlights, prior explorations, cartography and scientific surveys facilitated the ground domination. Furthermore, the colonial lobby

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22 considered the contribution of the explorers (later becoming a colonial myth)

fundamental to the colonial enterprise. The lobby included Savoy House, the

geographic and exploration societies, the colonial circles, the press sector, the war and building industries (Del Boca 2003b; Labanca 1992; Labanca 2002). As highlighted by Del Boca (2003b), a similar fate awaited Ethiopia, the last but most desired colony. Due to geopolitical and symbolic reasons, such as paying homage to the Roman Empire in its consolidation of the Italian young and weak nation, the colonial lobby urged for a colony in the Mediterranean basin. Moreover, Italy feared being excluded from North Africa by Britain and France. Thus, the Prime Minister, Giovanni Giolitti, ordered the military attack on the Ottoman Empire, including Libya, in October 1911. As a result of the Italo-Turskish War, Italy gained Libya and the Dodecanese Islands (Killinger 2001 in Thomas 2001:122). The Italian attack in Novermber 1911 on Tripoli was the world’s first instance of aerial bombardment (Fuller 2016). Total control over Libya, however, took twenty years, and the conflict with various native groups continued until 1934. These conflicts had been particularly violent, and the aim was not just to win, but to annihilate the population. The most brutal means were employed including deportations of entire populations, their internment in

concentration camps and also genocides (Del Boca 2003ab; Del Boca 2005; Fuller 2016).

Since 1859, Ethiopia, otherwise known as Abyssinia, has attracted the interests of many explorers fascinated by rich civilisations (Del Boca 2003b). During 1870, with the financial support of Società Geografica Italiana and Negus Menelik, a mission to Scioa, Ethiopia was organised to build a geographical station and medical centre. The expedition was not successful, but the explorers did not lose motivation, organising several other expeditions until the end of the nineteenth century. The Count Pietro Antonelli was in charge of building relations with Manelik to obtain a protectorate signed in 1889, the Treaty of Uccialli. The Treaty was unfaithfully interpreted by Italy resulting in the first Italo-Ethiopian War (Guerra d’Abissinia) and to the Adwa

disaster. The following Peace Treaty of Addiss Ababa in 1896 abrogated the Uccialli treaty. In 1935, in revenge of Adwa’s defeat and continuing colonial attempts made during the 1890s, Mussolini attacked Ethiopia with 400,000 soldiers, without a

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23 declaration of war (Del Boca 2003:29). The rest of the country had to be conquered, not an easy task given the resistance of the colonised.

Colonialism has been a fundamental part of the Fascist regime project of unifying Italians during its dictatorship (1922-1943); Italy consolidated its control of Libya and added Ethiopia and Albania to its Eritrean, Somali, and Dodecanese Islands holdings (Ben-Ghiat and Fuller 2005: 5). Albania, the sixth and final holding, was invaded in 1939 becoming part of the Italian Empire. The Italian King, Victor Emmanuel III, seized the Albanian Crown, and a fascist government under Shefqet Verlaci was ratified to govern the country (Thomas 2001:17).

1.4.1 The End of Colonialism

Italy’s empire did not end as a result of the revolts by its colonised peoples (as was the case in Britain and France), but by military defeat and diplomatic agreement. The Allied powers (Great Britain and France) had taken over Eritrea, Somalia and Libya as they defeated the Italian armies in Africa during World War II (Del Boca 2003a; Labanca 2005; Palma 2017). Even though the liberals, leftists and even neo-fascists joined after 1945 in a campaign to hold onto Italy’s colonies – a fact that shows the Italians’ interest for its empire status – the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty made the losses official (Ben-Ghiat &Fuller 2005:2). In November 1949, Italian Somaliland was ratified as a United Nations Trust Territory under Italian administration. This status lasted until 1 July 1960 when Italian Somaliland was granted independence and, with British Somaliland, formed the Somali Republic (Fuller 2016).

1.4.2 Particularities/Peculiarities of Italian Colonialism

Several peculiarities have been highlighted by historians and scholars regarding Italian colonialism in comparison to other European colonial cases.

The most remarkable and often forgotten is the fact that ‘Mussolini’s empire was the longest and substantially the only experiment of colonialism in Africa by a fascist power’ (Labanca 2003: 42). The fascist domination was different to the past colonialism of the liberal period (1875-1914). During the ventennio fascista, there was a much larger financial commitment towards the colonial cause than the liberal era, spending more on the colonies than on domestic, social welfare and

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24 the quantity, in the direction, and in the cycles of foreign trade’ (Labanca 2003:46). In spite of these shifts, the Italian colonial experience remained limited and secondary. However, the totalitarian nature of Mussolini’s regime has reflected on the ‘Italian colonial violence and repression’ (Ben-Ghiat & Fuller 2005: 4), which arrayed several brutal actions, such as: old-fashioned savageries (decapitations, castrations and the destruction of civilian neighbourhoods), mass-scale killing methods, including the aerial gas bombings in violation of the 1925 Gas Protocol, massacres and

concentration camps. Italy has been ‘the first European country in the twentieth century to employ genocidal tactics outside of the context of world war’ (Ben-Ghiat & Fuller 2005:4).

As Labanca (2002:8) claims, the contradictory way colonial memories are embedded in Italy is due to historical and historiographical explanations. In comparison to other colonial empires, particularly Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal, the Italian colonialism has been one of the most restricted geographically, one of the poorest economically and the least worthwhile in general. Furthermore, Italian colonialism lasted for the limited period of sixty years whereas others colonial powers lasted for a couple of centuries. Colonialism in Italy is comparable to Germany and Japan. All three countries were monarchies and had three important features: ‘late national unification and industrialization, a heavy reliance on outmigration, and the formation of fascist antiliberal and anticommunist movements after the disappointments of World War I’ (Ben-Ghiat and Fuller 2005:3).

Modest financial availability limited ambitious land settlement plans. As Ben-Ghiat and Fuller (2005) observe, poverty has marked Italian colonialism. When Mussolini in 1936 officially proclaimed the Italian Empire from the balcony Pizza Venezia Palace in Rome, in front of thousands of people, the Italian state was nearly bankrupt. For colonial supporters, empire expansionism represented an instrument for

promoting Italian power and modernity, escaping subordinate international positions. Fabricating the maintenance of authority and prestige was a central concern for the fascist regime and the wealthy classes: ‘in these obsessive concerns about prestige and image lies the particularity of the Italian civilizing mission’ (Ben-Ghiat & Fuller 2005:3). Poverty also made Italy a nation of emigrants. During the liberal and fascist

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25 periods, the ideas of ‘demographic colonisation’ was seen as a solution to solve its internal economic situation. The colonies were used, hence, to resettle the large number of people who could not find a job in Italy (Ben-Ghiat & Fuller 2005:3). Labanca (2003:42) argues that Italian colonialism could be seen as ‘a case of socialimperialism’: an expansionism overseas aimed at integrating internal classes within Italian society1.

1_{‘Il caso italiano fu un caso di socialimperialismo, cioè di espansionismo esterno} volto ad integrare all’interno ceti e classi sociali’ (Labanca 2003:24)

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26 CHAPTER TWO

The Colonial Visual Production of Africa: Colonial Exhibitions and the Museo Coloniale of Rome

2.0 Introduction

Because the Italian involvement in colonialism started late and the Italians had been rather sceptical about the country’s participation, a colonialist consciousness had to be forged throughout the second half of the nineteenth century to build a consensus for this project. A visual culture, presented through the medium of the exhibition, was crucial to the process of communicating this consciousness on a mass scale (Labanca 2002). Therefore, this chapter will look at the role colonial exhibitions had in the process of building a colonialist mentality; it further explores how the Museo

Coloniale was used as a tool for political propaganda. Moreover, as few Italians were well informed about Africa, the diffusion of images mass-presented, as part of what could be called the ‘exhibitionary complex’ (Bennett 1988), created stereotypical beliefs regarding issues of otherness and ethnicity that remained potent until today. For this reason, examples of these images created within these colonial exhibitions and museum displays are analysed in this chapter. In short, this chapter will, therefore, explore the history of the Museo Coloniale, how the collection was amassed and its narrative during the fascist period.

2.2 Colonial Exhibitions

Due to a lack of economic investment and social connection between Italy and its overseas territories, the State together with ‘the classical actors of imperialism’ (Labanca 1992:2) that included politicians, pro-colonial scholars, explorers, military and diplomatic sectors strongly attempted to influence public opinion with the

calculated purpose of disseminating colonial values and beliefs. Therefore, during the Italian Periodo Liberale (or the Liberal Period of 1861 to 1922) and the fascist

ventennio (or Mussolini’s regime from 1922 to 1943), illustrated magazines, films, theatre, art productions, travel accounts and explorer diaries were utilised for creating myths, ideologies and strong images to obtain the necessary political and social support (Ponzanesi 2016:376). It is easy to see how museums and exhibitions were

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27 also used for the process of ‘African acculturation’ (Labanca 1992) and as

propaganda instruments for consensus-building. The colonial lobby- like politicians, geographic and exploration societies - employed abundant effort to assemble

exhibitions, new colonial institutions or simply new colonial halls within existing museums. Although these initiatives were mostly unsuccessful as they did not become independent or stable, the new colonial ‘exhibitionary complex’(Bennet 1988) played a crucial role in familiarising Italians with Africa and for promoting a better

understanding of it. For most Italians, excluding explorers, military officers and entrepreneurs, these institutions and events represented their only contact with Africa (Labanca 1992). Moreover, it seemed evident that these exhibitions would be able to have a more effective impact on the Italian imagination than textbooks or radio broadcasts.

Salvatore Bono established that in the period from 1891 to 1940, there had been 23 colonial exhibitions around Italy (Bono 1992:35). Some of these are well known and documented; others were smaller installations meaning that little documentary evidence has been found. The most significant colonial exhibitions that are worth noting are: La Mostra coloniale, Genova 1914; La Mostra delle Colonie Italiane alla Seconda Fiera Campionaria di Napoli 1920; Mostra Tripolina Presso la Fiera di Milano 1923; Sezione Italiana dell’Esposition du Sahara in Paris 1934; Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Coloniale di Roma 1934; Mostra Triennale delle Terre d’Oltremare Napoli 1940 (Bono 1992).

Colonial exhibitions were designed as a type of open-air museum divided into different sections called pavilions. The various pavilions were divided into a geographic order for each colony and in each of them African villages were

artificially recreated. These villages had colonial houses, primitive huts and animals, demonstrated the use of objects and staged live performances daily. In almost all the exhibitions, actual Africans inhabited the pavilions and were presented as a scenic feature. Groups of ‘Tripolinis’ and Arabs dressed in folkloric costumes would walk around, making themselves available to pose for a photograph (Chiozzi 1992; Dore 1992). The colony was depicted through photographs of everyday life, marble statues and plasters of colonial cities. Moreover, as Dore (1992) highlights, the visual

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28 representation of colonial life aimed to show the colonies’ resourcefulness, and hence the opportunity for commercial exploitation for Italian colonizers.

The presence of the indigenous proved to be the most effective way of strengthening the apparent authenticity of the pavilions (Morton 2000 in Minca 2006); it further helped to emphasise the indigenous docility, willingness and gratitude to be civilised by the colonisers (Dore 1992). Basically, indigenous people were depicted at the lowest level of the evolutionary chain (Labanca 1992), and ‘Africa, the colony, was degraded to the depiction of a village’ (Labanca 1992:3). These fabricated

presentations and accounts helped to build a general sense of the Italian conquest. (Labanca 1992). The restaged life of the colonies was simplified and romanticised so that it could easily elicit an emotional reaction from the visitors, thus influencing their acceptance of the colonialist ideology (Dore 1992; Chiozzi 1992). According to Dore (1992:52), the way the layout and the temporal dimensions were organised rationally and emotionally enabled the visitors to learn about the colonialist ideology.

For example, in the Colonial Art Exhibition held in Rome in 1931 (Archivio Storico Luce 1931), Africans dressed in costume were guarding the entrance of the

exhibition, and they restaged this notion of ‘real life’ in the recreated village shops.

Figure 2: Indigenous people in costume guarding the entrance of the exhibition. Screenshots of the footage of the inauguration of the Esposizione di Arte Coloniale (Colonial Art Exhibition) in Rome. Source: Archivio Storico Luce 1931.

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Figure 3: Indigenous people in costume guarding the entrance of the exhibition. Screenshots of the footage of the inauguration of the Esposizione di Arte Coloniale (Colonial Art Exhibition) in Rome. Source: Archivio Storico Luce 1931.

Figure 4:Indigenous people performing daily activities in the colonial pavilion in the Esposizione di Arte Coloniale (Colonial Art Exhibition) in Rome. Screenshots of the footage of the inauguration. Source: Archivio Storico Luce 1931.

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Figure 5: Indigenous people performing daily activities in the colonial pavilion in the Esposizione di Arte Coloniale (Colonial Art Exhibition) in Rome. Screenshots of the footage. Source: Archivio Storico Luce 1931.

In the Triennale Exhibition of Overseas Lands organised in Naples 1940, villages inhabited by African families “brought over” directly from Africa were recreated. Human beings were displayed depicting “the typical Libyan, Eritrean and Somali indigenous” and performing folkloric ceremonies and feasts (Dore 1992:58).

Figure 6:Indigenous village in the ‘Italian Oriental Africa’ (A.O.I) recreated at the Triennale Exhibition of Overseas Lands 1940. Source: Labanca (1992:59).

Investigating the Reinstallation of the Museo Coloniale di Roma: A Microcosm of Italian Colonial Memory

Investigating the Reinstallation of the Museo Coloniale di Roma:

A Microcosm of Italian Colonial Memory

Table of Contents