From the 15th century, Italy holds a significant heritage of non-European works and artifacts but several of them are little-known or found in an under-resourced museum. No more; with the MIPAM Network, several Italian institutions will collaborate with each other to preserve the cultural heritage of every single artifact. The official establishment of the network took place on June 10, 2025, at the Stibbert Museum in Florence.
The idea behind this network started with several meetings between 2023 and 2025 involving several Italian institutions, giving rise to a professional community to bring together directors, curators, conservators, and archivists active in state, municipal, university, missionary, and private contexts. It ended by establishing itself at the end of the four preparatory meetings between 2023 and 2025 in Milan, Parma, Turin, and Florence.
The birth of this network will allow several underprivileged museums to display their collection through collaboration with bigger museums. Furthermore, it will show greater awareness in the Italian museum scene through creating a system, that is more interconnected, up-to-date, and prepared to deal with the complex issues related to the history, ethics, and conservation of the world’s cultural heritage. Promoted by MUDEC in Milan, this network will be open to new memberships.
This will bring together the entities that are heterogeneous in terms of history, legal nature, and type of collection, many of which also operate outside the traditional museum circuits. Though several institutions have differences, they will share a common vision; to promote research, improve accessibility, and enhance the heritage of non-European works and their articulated cultural contexts of reference and provenance. Furthermore, the member museums will have a stable point of reference for the development of shared projects, from the creation of exhibitions and publications to training initiatives, public meetings and in-depth activities that highlight the richness of the material and intangible heritage they hold.
Featured Image: Uffizi Museum, Florence; Txllxt TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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