Presented by Itala Vivan (Università degli Studi di Milano)

Since times immemorial, the Mediterranean world has been shaped by migrations of peoples who have crossed and re-crossed both visible and invisible boundaries, modifying them through patterns of endless mobility. The migratory flows that characterise our present are but one more stage in that centuries-long history. In modern times, museums designed to narrate European emigration have been created as memory archives of a social phenomenon that marks the cultural landscape of Mediterranean societies.

Itala Vivan will touch upon the history and function of such museums, citing two prototypes in the US, then referring to case studies in Italy and France and questioning their cultural and political purport in contemporary society, where identities are seen as fluid, dynamic and multiple rather than essentialist and fixed. Particular attention will be given to the case of the Italian island of Lampedusa, where the massive flow of contemporary migration had suggested the project of a new museum and documentation centre on migrations, then failed because of differences concerning the nature of such a museum.  Nevertheless at Porto M in Lampedusa there is a certain sort of museum with migrants’ objects.

What kind of involvement could a museum on migrations have in the harrowing situation affecting the Mediterranean, and what kind of interaction should it create?  Should we perhaps switch from national museums to European transnational institutions narrating immigration from a more general viewpoint, and seeking inspiration from Fernand Braudel’s vision of European history? What is the role of objects in such a museum?  The analysis depends on the concept of a new museum devoted to a cultural representation  relying on Zygmunt Bauman’s vision of contemporary society as liquid and, as such, in order to develop the museum pattern inscribed in our heritage into a comprehensive vision of what is actually happening in our world and project it onto the backdrop of a multicultural Europe.

This is a free event and open to all, registration is not required.