Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia

The Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia hold an Indigenous American collection that is relatively small in number but of great qualitative significance. The most important nucleus consists of Lakota and Cheyenne materials collected by Antonio Spagni between 1833 and 1844. Also important are the collections from Tierra del Fuego assembled by Vincenzo Bonini (1903–1911) and Luigi Luiggi (1895), as well as the Amazonian materials gathered by the consular agent Enrico Schivazappa (1883–1888) and by his nephews Enrico and Armando (1896–1898). A smaller Amazonian group is due to Alessandro Stefanini (1999), while a set of musical instruments comes from the former Regio Museo Preistorico Etnografico in Rome. Of great interest is the small nucleus of Guaraní materials that formed the stage costume of the tenor Ludovico Giraud (1880).

The museum also preserves pre-Columbian archaeological collections, including some clay materials from Central Mexico (Bernardino Biondelli Collection, 1874), Mesoamerican and Colombian ceramics (Luigi Bruni, 1901–1908), jade necklace beads of Maya provenance (Eleonora Dall’Omo), Chimú vessels (former Biblioteca Popolare), and some Chancay materials, among which a mummy (Ernesto Mazzei, 1884).