MUDEC – Museo delle Culture

The history of the Amerindian collections now preserved at MUDEC goes back to 1858, when the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano established a section called Raccolta di Etnografia ed Archeologia. In 1878 the Museo Artistico Municipale was founded, and in 1919 the collections of the Castello Sforzesco were enriched by the Raccolta Turati, which also included pre-Columbian artifacts.

In 1929 the historic Raccolta di Etnografia ed Archeologia of the Museo di Storia Naturale was transferred to the Musei del Castello Sforzesco, where in the first half of the century it was further enriched by various donations (Angelo Cordani, Ignazio Vigoni). The bombing of August 1943 caused the destruction of almost all of the ethnographic collections.

In the second half of the century, new donations and purchases enriched the collections (Carlo Erba, Silvio Segre, Agostino Pirri). In 2002 Emilia Balzarotti donated the collection of her son Federico, consisting of Peruvian objects purchased during numerous journeys in Latin America undertaken before 1972.

The largest ethnographic collection now preserved at MUDEC is that donated by the physician Aldo Lo Curto between the late 1990s and the early 2000s, coming from various regions of the Americas. Finally, in 2010 the Fondazione Alessandro Passaré granted MUDEC an important long-term loan. Although Passaré was above all a collector of African art, the American nucleus includes archaeological objects gathered and purchased in Latin America during a series of journeys undertaken in the 1960s.