Museums - Vatican Ethnological Missionary Museum
Vatican Ethnological Missionary Museum
Vatican City
Italy
+39 06698-81349
 | Monday – Saturday, 8h45 – 15h30
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The Vatican Museums are a complex of various pontifical museums and galleries located in the Holy See in Rome, the first of which were established under the patronage of Popes Clement XIV (1769–1774) and Pius VI (1775–1799). Having originated as a group of sculptures collected by Pope Julius II (1503–1513), the Vatican's collection of art and artifacts has grown over five hundred years to encompass an enormous number of objects in a wide variety of artistic fields. From the mid-eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the Vatican Museums have been successively enlarged by a number of popes, and now include galleries of Classical antiquities, lapidary arts, Etruscan antiquities, Egyptian artifacts, historical and modern religious art, tapestries, and ethnographic art, as well as the world-famous Sistine Chapel and other marvels of fresco painting by a number of Renaissance masters.
The Vatican's collections of tribal art began in 1692, when missionary Fray Francisco Romero presented a number of wooden carvings from a shrine in northern Colombia to Pope Innocent XII, who directed that they be housed in the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide. These were incorporated into the collections of Cardinal Stefano Borgia, Prefect of Propaganda Fide, and after the Cardinal's death, one part of his collection remained in the Vatican as the Museo Borgiano di Propaganda. During the nineteenth century, the museum's holdings were enlarged through the efforts of missionaries throughout the world, and after the great Vatican Exhibition of 1887, yet more objects were added to the collections.
The objects held at the Museo Borgiano were eventually absorbed by the Ethnological Missionary Museum (Pontificio Museo Missionario-Etnologico), which was founded by Pope Pius XI in 1926. The new museum was originally inaugurated in the Lateran Palace, where it was housed until 1963, when its contents were moved to the Palace of San Callisto in Trastevere. The museum was relocated to its present site in the Vatican in 1973, under the order of Pope Paul VI. Installation of the museum's secondary collections as study-storage was completed in 1979.
The nucleus of the collection, which comprised about 40,000 objects, had been selected by a special committee headed by the museum's first director, Verbite priest Father Wilhelm Schmidt, from among a group of some 100,000 objects which had come into the Vatican's possession through private donations, international missions, and from 400 dioceses for the Missionary Exhibition of 1925, which was organized by Pope Pius XI. During the twentieth century, the museum's holdings were enriched with multiple new acquisitions and donations, including the collection of plaster portraits of American Indian populations made by German sculptor Ferdinand Pettrich, the collection of prehistoric objects of the British School of Archaeology of Jerusalem, and the collection of Sepik ceremonial objects that once belonged to Verbite Father Franz Kirschbaum.
Today, the holdings at the Ethnological Missionary Museum total some 80,000 objects from Asia, Oceania, Africa, and the Americas. The collections are bifurcated to reflect, on one hand, artistic products of indigenous religious culture, and on the other, objects that were created after Catholic evangelization. The former are the focus of the museum's displays, the latter being primarily held in storage and accessible upon request. The museum houses particularly remarkable objects from Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.
The Vatican's collections of tribal art began in 1692, when missionary Fray Francisco Romero presented a number of wooden carvings from a shrine in northern Colombia to Pope Innocent XII, who directed that they be housed in the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide. These were incorporated into the collections of Cardinal Stefano Borgia, Prefect of Propaganda Fide, and after the Cardinal's death, one part of his collection remained in the Vatican as the Museo Borgiano di Propaganda. During the nineteenth century, the museum's holdings were enlarged through the efforts of missionaries throughout the world, and after the great Vatican Exhibition of 1887, yet more objects were added to the collections.
The objects held at the Museo Borgiano were eventually absorbed by the Ethnological Missionary Museum (Pontificio Museo Missionario-Etnologico), which was founded by Pope Pius XI in 1926. The new museum was originally inaugurated in the Lateran Palace, where it was housed until 1963, when its contents were moved to the Palace of San Callisto in Trastevere. The museum was relocated to its present site in the Vatican in 1973, under the order of Pope Paul VI. Installation of the museum's secondary collections as study-storage was completed in 1979.
The nucleus of the collection, which comprised about 40,000 objects, had been selected by a special committee headed by the museum's first director, Verbite priest Father Wilhelm Schmidt, from among a group of some 100,000 objects which had come into the Vatican's possession through private donations, international missions, and from 400 dioceses for the Missionary Exhibition of 1925, which was organized by Pope Pius XI. During the twentieth century, the museum's holdings were enriched with multiple new acquisitions and donations, including the collection of plaster portraits of American Indian populations made by German sculptor Ferdinand Pettrich, the collection of prehistoric objects of the British School of Archaeology of Jerusalem, and the collection of Sepik ceremonial objects that once belonged to Verbite Father Franz Kirschbaum.
Today, the holdings at the Ethnological Missionary Museum total some 80,000 objects from Asia, Oceania, Africa, and the Americas. The collections are bifurcated to reflect, on one hand, artistic products of indigenous religious culture, and on the other, objects that were created after Catholic evangelization. The former are the focus of the museum's displays, the latter being primarily held in storage and accessible upon request. The museum houses particularly remarkable objects from Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.