Il Museo nacional de la inmigración, Buenos Aires, Argentina / The National Museum of Immigration, Buenos Aires, Argentina, pp. 521-526
You could say that for what concerns Argentina, immigration and national history are the same identical thing. The Museo Nacional de la Inmigración intends then to both acknowledge the contributions of the men and women who built Argentina without having been born there, and to provide new interpretations for a phenomenon that still today plays such an important role in its society both at the national and the international level.
Ana Maria da Costa Leitão Vieira, Il Memorial do Imigrante, São Paulo, Brasile / The Immigrant Memorial Museum, São Paulo, Brazil, pp. 527-535
The Memorial do Imigrante of São Paulo is housed in what used to be the old “Hospice for the Immigrants” which, starting from 1887, received about 1.8 million immigrants from 70 different countries (but for the most part of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese origin), and 1.2 million native workers form various parts of Brazil. It is located between Brás and Mooca, two typical Italian neighbourhoods that came into existence because the Italians immigrants at their arrival had decided to settle and work there. About 80,000 people annually visit the “Immigrant Memorial” which makes it to date the third most visited museum in the city of São Paulo.
Sebastian Padmini, L’Immigration Museum, Melbourne, Australia. Ricordi e storie commoventi / The Immigration Museum, Melbourne, Australia. Memories and Moving stories, pp. 536-544
Victoria is one of Australia’s most culturally diverse State’s. Victorians come from over 200 countries, speak over 180 languages and dialects and follow over 110 religious faiths. It is in this context that the Immigration Museum was initiated by the State Government of Victoria. The Immigration Museum opened in November 1998. The Museum’s central remit is to document the immigration heritage of Victoria from the 1800s to the present day. The Museum is an important part of the cultural and historical landscape of Victoria and Australia – it is a living cultural centre and a forum to preserve our diverse inheritance handed down from ancestors and predecessors – it is an opportunity to learn about the past and understand how it continues to contribute to who we are as a people and nation.
Giancarlo Martini-Piovano, L’esperienza italo-australiana nella collezione dell’Italian Historical Society CO.AS.IT., Melbourne, Australia / The Italian Australian experience in the collection of the Italian Historical Society-CO.AS.IT., pp. 545-555
The story of Italian migration to this country is a very important part of the Australian story and the heritage of Italian migrants is also the heritage of all Australians. It is important that their stories be handed down and recorded in the way the migrants themselves want them told. It was the need to foster pride in the Italian heritage and in an Italian-Australia identity that led to the foundation in 1980 of the Italian Historical Society by CO.AS.IT.-Italian Assistance Association.
John Petersen, Il Migration Heritage Centre (MHC), Sydney, Australia / The Migration Heritage Centre (MHC), State of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, pp. 556-564
All people in Australia share the legacy of migration. Unless we are Aboriginal people, we are all migrants or descendants of migrants. The Migration Heritage Centre’s website fulfills the New South Wales Government’s vision for a museum without walls and an online heritage centre. It was developed to showcase the cultural diversity of the people of New South Wales and their heritage legacy, in particular, their memories of migrating and settling, associated heritage places and family and community heritage collections. It helps families pass stories onto the present generation.
Carrie-Ann Smith, Pier 21: la porta d’ingresso in Canada per migliaia d’immigrati italiani / Pier 21: The Gateway to Canada for Thousands of Italian Immigrants, pp. 565-571
For many Italian-Canadians, Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was their introduction to a new country. During the Pier 21 years 471,940 individuals came to Canada from Italy making them the third largest ethnic group to immigrate between 1928 and 1971. Pier 21 National Historic Site reopened to the public on Canada Day 1999. The museum celebrates the immigrant experience and strives to tell the stories of immigrants through multimedia exhibits and films. It is the last standing immigration shed in Canada and has become a touch-stone for thousands of Italians who chose Canada.
L’Ellis Island Museum, New York, Stati Uniti / The Ellis Island Museum, New York, United States of America, pp. 572-580
From 1892 to 1954, over twelve million immigrants entered the United States through the portal of Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor; most were on their way to becoming Americans. In November of 1954 Ellis Island officially closed. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson declared Ellis Island part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. The Main Building was reopened to the public on September 10, 1990 as the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. Today, the museum receives almost 2 million visitors annually.
L’Italian American Museum, New York, Stati Uniti / The Italian American Museum, New York, United States of America, pp. 581-582
The Italian American Museum is dedicated to exploring the rich cultural heritage of Italy and Italian Americans by presenting the individual and collective struggles and achievements of Italians and their heirs to the American way of life.
Mordechai Ben-Porat, Il Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, Or-Yehuda, Israele. Cronistoria della comunità giudaica di Babilonia / The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, Or-Yehuda, Israel. Chronicles of Babylonian Jewry, pp. 583-587
In Or-Yehuda, a town in central Israel where half the population are of Iraqi origin, a research center and a museum devoted to the heritage of Babylonian Jewry was established in 1988. The purposes of these centers were: to preserve, document and collect everything that remained of the ancient Babylonian exile after the hasty emigration in the fifties when the majority of the Iraqi Jews left Iraq for Israel without having been able to take with them any property, documents, photographs that would validate their past; to expose information about the life, culture and the contributions of the Jews of the oldest exile, available to all Israelis and to the world at large.
Maria Beatriz Rocha-Trindade, Miguel Monteiro, Il Museu da Emigração e das Comunidades, Fafe, Portogallo / The Museum of Migrants and Communities, Fafe, Portugal, pp. 588-596
The reality of Portuguese migration towards all continents goes back a long, long time; consequently, it is important to acknowledge and preserve its memories. It is healthy, in fact, to establish and maintain ties and relationships at the individual, communal, and institutional levels between communities that have been touched by migration, and between the countries of departure and destinations of migrants. To make this exchange of views possible and to ensure that it may overcome the restrictions of time and space, it is necessary to create permanent structures, Migration Museums where the present and future generations may explore their, social, cultural, family related, and geographical roots.
Imma Boj, Il Museo de Historia de la Inmigración de Cataluña (MHIC), Barcellona, Spagna / The Museum of the History of Migration of Catalonia (MHIC), Barcelona, Spain, pp. 597-599
The purpose of the soon to be built museum is to provide a place for people to acknowledge, study, and appreciate the specific reality of migration in the Catalonian society, an open, welcoming society in constant evolution. The Museum will be known as MHIC (Museo de Historia de la Inmigración en Cataluña) and will be located in Sant Adrià de Besòs, a village just outside of Barcelona.
Marcelino Fernández Santiago, L’Arquivo da Emigración Galega (AEG), Santiago di Compostela, Spagna / The Archives of the Galega Migration (AEG) Santiago de Compostela, Spain, pp. 600-604
L’Arquivo da Emigración Galega has been created in 1992 by the Council of Galega Culture with the purpose of making it into a documentation centre, a place of exchange and an open space not only for researchers but for anyone interested in the study of migratory phenomena. Since its inception, the centre provides a space for scientific and cultural investigations such as establishing a database, collecting, preserving, classifying and sharing the wealth of documentation about the Galega migration. One of its priorities is the salvaging and preservation from damage or loss of documents regarding the Galega migration spread around the world.
Agnès Arquez-Roth, La Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration, Parigi, Francia / The Cité Nationale of the History of Immigration, Paris, France, pp. 605-616
The Cité is a new form of cultural institution because it breaks down the complex exchange between cultural entities and society into different levels. This exchange is symbolized by the realization of a project that involves a place, the Palais de la Porte Dorée, and a network of partners. The actual project is still under construction and it intends to bring forward the underlying social, political, and cultural substratum, in a multiple society. The novelty of this approach is that it does not count on pre-existing collections. The point of the whole effort consists in putting together an eclectic collection spanning the duration of two centuries of immigration to France, not to showcase some objects for their intrinsic value, but to illustrate an idea. This scientific and cultural endeavour places the museum on an educational path for the purpose of rescuing a forgotten part of the French national history in order to include it in the official national French history.
Il Migrations Museum, Zurigo, Svizzera / The Migrations Museum, Zurich, Switzerland, pp. 617-619
The plans for a Museum of Migrations are presently under consideration at Zurich’s City Council. The idea came from the Association known as Migrationsmuseum Schweiz, founded in 1998 with the purpose of realizing a museum dedicated to migration in general, and in particular to Switzerland itself as a country of immigration. The future Museum of Migrations is designed to be a stable, dynamic, modern institution where Switzerland can view itself as a country characterized not only by migration but also by immigration: a place with multiple identities where you can profess a cosmopolitan mentality, and where you can see what migration has been yesterday, is today, and will be tomorrow.
Since 1990, DOMiT – the Documentation Center and Museum of Migration in Germany – has been collecting documents and material concerning the history of migration to Germany. DOMiT’s goal is to preserve for the future generations the heritage of the immigrants. The immigration experience has not only shaped the immigrants and their offspring but it has also affected German society.
Il Danish Immigration Museum, Farum, Danimarca / The Danish Immigration Museum, Farum, Denmark, pp. 622-623
The Danish Immigration Museum is located in the ancient municipality of Furesø, twenty kilometers north of Copenhagen, and is part of its City Hall’s archives and local museum. Its aim is to stress the fact that the almost totality of the population does not descend from the population of the ancient rural village but came from other regions of Denmark and even from outside the country. This, in part, is the reason why our museum became aware of migration. Therefore, the Danish Immigration Museum is conceived as the unifying factor for our local historical exhibitions.
Il Norwegian Emigrant Museum, Ottestad, Norvegia / The Norwegian Emigrant Museum, Ottestad, Norway, pp. 624-625
The Norwegian Emigrant Museum was established in 1988 and reorganized in 2005. The museum’s purpose is to reveal the workings of a process - emigration, immigration and return migration - a process with historical depth and space, yet with personal impact upon many human beings. To fulfill this purpose, the museum intends to be a meeting place between the past and the present, between the “family at home” and the “family out there”, to be a symbol for all Norwegians and their descendants at home and abroad, and a place where they can confirm their identity and their connections to Norway.
Miguel Benito, L’Immigrant-institutets Museum, Borås, Svezia / The Immigrant-institute Museum, Borås, Sweden, pp. 626-629
The Immigrant Institute is a non- governmental organization that functions as the National research and documentation centre for Immigrants and Refugees in Sweden. The Institute was founded in 1973 in Stockholm and relocated to Borås in 1975. From the beginning, the Immigrant Institute has worked to create both a library and archives dedicated to research. The library at the Immigrant Institute contains an extensive amount of resources concerning immigration, with a focus on Sweden as an immigration country. The library also maintains a collection of reports and essays from universities and state authorities. The primary focus, of the archives today, is to preserve documents produced by immigrants and immigrant associations.
Noemi Ugolini, Il Museo dell’Emigrante della Repubblica di San Marino / The Museum of the Migrant, Republic of San Marino, pp. 630-636
Created in 1997, the Museum of the Migrant-Permanent Centre of Migration Studies of the Republic of San Marino, occupies a few rooms in an old monastery. Its goal is to document the Diaspora of the of the Republic’s citizens that starting from the middle of the nineteenth century and continuing on through the middle of the twentieth, has brought 12,000 of them to settle in various countries of the world where they still live.
Paul de Guchteneire, Marta Severo, Carine Rouah, Il Migration Museums Initiative / The Migration Museum Initiative, pp. 637-644
The proliferation around the world of “migration museums” is a phenomenon that developed in the most recent years. Typically, from a social and political standpoint these museums convey the idea of dialog and of appreciation of cultural diversity drawing attention to the migration phenomena and to the preservation of the original cultures. In this perspective, some international organizations (UNESCO and OIM) have decided to help these museums to build a network for the sharing of information and the organization of common activities. The network, in fact, has been active since October 2006; its membership counts several centres on a world scale, and operates a web site to facilitate the cooperation among members.
I musei d’emigrazione in Italia: tra realtà e progetti / Migration Museums in Italy: between projects and reality, pp. 645-720
Sono qui presentati alcuni dei musei d’emigrazione creati o in progetto nelle varie realtà italiane. Diversi sono i contesti, gli ideatori, i percorsi museali offerti da questa miriade di “musei e centri di documentazione” che costellano da alcuni decenni la Penisola. Tutti sono, però, accomunati dall’unico obiettivo di non disperdere la memoria storica dell’emigrazione che, pur avendo forgiato l’identità di un popolo (25 milioni d’Italiani), rischia di essere reclusa nella sezione degli oggetti folcloristici di un lontano passato.
In this paragraph we intend to deal with some of the migration museums already created or still on the planning stages in various Italian cities. Each of these “museums and documentation centres” which for decades have been proliferating in large numbers around the Italian Peninsula, reflects its own social context, claims its own creator, and offers its own specific message. All of them, however, share the same objective: not letting go to waste the historical memories of migration which in spite of having given an identity to a whole population runs the risk of being considered a mere folkloric memory of the past.
Michele Colucci, Storia o memoria? L’emigrazione italiana tra ricerca storica, uso pubblico e valorizzazione culturale / History or memory? Italian migration a subject of historical research, public domain, and cultural phenomenon, pp. 721-728
During the last ten years the history of Italian migration has been the subject of numerous studies done not only by specialists but also by reporters, writers, movie and television directors, cultural animators, not excluding museums and other places dedicated to preserving the memories. Coming to the specific case of the regional museum of Gualdo Tadino, our goal is to reconstruct the origins, the characteristics, the risks, and the potential of mixing history and memories, which is particularly evident in the recent re-discovery of Italian migration.
Emilio Franzina, Dai musei al museo: emigrazione e storia d’Italia / From Museums to “The Museum”: Migration and History in Italy, pp. 729-741
Between 2002 and the first half of 2007, which is to say in less than five years, at least twice every year there has been in Italy the opening or the announcement of the project for a local museum of migration. Some of them owe their existence to the pressure of migrant associations and other entities, not rarely as follow up to exhibits of photographs, documents or travelling displays. Considering the fragmented nature of these achievements, the creation of a national museum of migration will provide the Italians with a public space where to preserve the memory of their “national” migration; besides it symbolic practical value, its realization might also offer support and guidance to the myriad of local and regional museums already in existence.
Paola Corti, Musei dell’emigrazione e fotografia / Photography and Museums of Migration, pp. 742-753
In this article a reflection over the use of photography opens up to a discussion about the ever growing phenomenon of new museums both in Italy and abroad. For this reason it invokes the relationship between the use of private and public memories of migration, their visual representation and their display in museums.
Maddalena Tirabassi, Musei virtuali e reali sulle migrazioni / Virtual and real migration museums, pp. 754-761
In the course of these last decades that the reality of Italian migration has entered the public and political debate, research centres and museums, both individual and grouped in networks, have assumed a useful and complementary role. It has also become evident that, through the web, a museum of Italian migration has the potential of reaching a very large public made up of employees, students, and individuals with migratory experience both personal and family related.
Pietro Clemente, Anime di emigranti. L’emigrazione nei musei italiani demoetnoantropologici / The Souls of Migrants. Migration and the demo-ethno-anthropological Italian museums, pp. 762-769
The demo-ethno-anthropological museums known also as “museums of the farming culture”, museums of the “traditions”, and “ethnographical” museums can properly be considered “also” museums of Italian migrant culture, even if it is hardly mentioned. A museum can more easily document a territorial culture of the past leaving behind material traces and memories, than give witness to the exodus and the transformation of farmers and countrymen into the work force of other countries. But the connexion between those other countries and the local demo ethno anthropological museums is real.