Ethnological Museum Anima Mundi

The origin was the Vatican Missionary Exposition, inaugurated on 24 December 1924 and closed on 9 January 1926, which showed over 100,000 works in twenty-six pavilions. Pius XI founded the Ethnological Museum on 12 November 1926 and directed it to Fr Wilhelm Schmidt SVD, 1868 to 1954; the Missionary Ethnological Museum was inaugurated at St John Lateran on 21 December 1927 with about 80,000 works, and was enriched from 1928 with material from the Museo Borgiano of Propaganda Fide, some of it from the collection of Cardinal Stefano Borgia, 1731 to 1804. It closed on 1 February 1963, after John XXIII assigned the Lateran palace to the diocese of Rome, and the collection was stored at Palazzo San Callisto until a new venue opened inside the Vatican Museums in 1973 under Paul VI, designed by Fr Jozef Penkowski SVD, 1930 to 2006, with the Passarelli studio. A conservation programme ran from 1996 to 2009 under Don Roberto Zagnoli, 1938 to 2020, and the Ethnological Materials Laboratory was founded in 2001, coordinated by Stefania Pandozy to 2023 and then by Catherine Riviere. The Asia section part-opened for the Museums' fifth centenary, 1506 to 2006. The redisplay ran from 2009 to 2023 under Fr Nicola Mapelli, with the permanent display The Way of the Sea in 2010, Anima Mundi opening in 2019 with Mater Amazonia and the Oceania area, and the Americas and Africa completed in 2022. Nadia Fiussello has been curator since August 2024.