Museo d’Arte Cinese ed Etnografico

The Museo d’Arte Cinese ed Etnografico was founded in 1901 by Saint Guido Maria Conforti, bishop of the city of Parma and founder of the religious order of the Xaverian Missionaries. The museum is an artistic and documentary institution of exceptional importance, the result of a long historical process. From the late nineteenth century the missionaries were active in China and, responding to the request of Saint Conforti, periodically sent to Parma significant objects of local art and daily life, in order to celebrate the beauty of this culture and bring peoples closer together. From the 1960s onward, the museum was enriched with ethnographic materials from other countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The Latin American collection consists almost exclusively of artifacts originating from the Kayapó people of Amazonia, specifically from the Gorotire area of Brazil, assembled largely thanks to the dedication of Father Renato Trevisan to this community. The museum also preserves a small collection of archaeological material from Mesoamerica and the Northern Andes, about which little is known regarding provenance and collection history.