The Unhappy End of the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient (IsIAO) and the Uncertain Future of its Holdings

ABSTRACT

On December 10, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the liquidation of the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient (IsIAO). What is going to happen to the library, the archives, the photos and map collections, the paintings and other pieces of art, ethnographic materials, and other museum items that used to belong to the IsIAO? In the following pages, I sketch the history of the IsIAO and its institutional antecedents, provide a summary description of its holdings and their current predicament, and discuss some of the reasons behind the IsIAO's crisis.

Notes

1 According to the Italian State Audit Court, in December 2010 the IsIAO deficit had reached €3,050,845.06. From 2009 to 2010, the state funding to the IsIAO had decreased by 44% and were barely enough to cover the salaries of the 23 employees. Corte dei Conti, Determinazione n. 114/2013.

2 Ministero degli affari esteri, Decreto November 11, 2011, Assoggettamento alla liquidazione coatta amministrativa dell'Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente.

3 In 2013, a decree by the president of the Region Lazio that declared the “exceptional cultural value” of the IsIAO library, with the intention of protecting it from dispersion (Decreto del Presidente della Regione Lazio May 3, 2013, n. T00025) stated that the library held 2,236 Tibet manuscripts (G. Tucci collection), 53 Sanskrit manuscripts (G. Tucci collection), and 226 Arabic manuscripts (E. Dubbiosi collection). It further held 1,315 periodicals, including both current and historical ones, and dozens of thousands of books (the decree stated that the IsIAO library had an Oriental section of 51,468 volumes and a mixed African and Oriental section of 77,581 volumes).

For more information on the MNAO holdings, see the museum's website, http://www.museorientale.beniculturali.it.

4 L. April 29, 1953, n. 430, Soppressione del Ministero dell'Africa italiana, art. 20.

5 In 2002, the African Union adopted a Memorandum of Understanding on Security, Stability, Development, and Cooperation in Africa that provided for the delineation and demarcation of African boundaries by 2012, a term later extended to 2017.

6 The already cited decree by the president of the Region Lazio that declared the “exceptional cultural value” of the IsIAO library stated that it had an African section of 1,241 periodicals and 50,973 volumes, and a mixed African and Oriental section of 77,581 volumes. According to the online list (anagrafe) of Italian libraries run by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle biblioteche italiane e per le informazioni bibliografiche - ICCU, the African section of the IsIAO library comprised 300 current and 1,000 historical periodicals http://anagrafe.iccu.sbn.it/opencms/opencms/ricerche/dettaglio.html?codic e_isil=it-RM0108

7 Both the letter by Giorgio Banti, Fabio Viti, Giampaolo Calchi Novati, Sandro Triulzi, and Pierluigi Valsecchi and Ambassador Armellini's reply are available online: https://studiafricani.wordpress.com/news-1-il-commissariamento-dellisiao/

8 D.p.c.m. May 25, 2012, Allocazione di funzioni, compiti e personale dell'Istituto italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente (IsIAO), al Ministero degli affari esteri.

9 Istituto italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente in liquidazione coatta amministrativa, Avviso pubblico per la manifestazione di interesse ai fini della partecipazione alla procedura ristretta per l'affidamento in concessione dei servizi di valorizzazione dei beni culturali nella disponibilità dell'IsIAO, published on the Gazzetta Ufficiale of July 27, 2015.

10 This letter was published on the ASAI website http://www.asaiafrica.org/contatti/liquidazione-i siao/.

11 The associations that signed the letter are: Società italiana per lo studio della storia contemporanea (SISSCO), Società Italiana per la storia dell'età moderna (SISEM), Associazione Nazionale Archivistica Italiana (ANAI), Associazione italiana biblioteche (AIB), Società italiana delle storiche (SIS), Società per gli studi di storia delle istituzioni, Associazione Nazionale Universitaria degli Antropologi Culturali (ANUAC), Centro Interuniversitario di Studi e Ricerche Storico-Militari, Arch.I.M. – Archivisti In Movimento, Associazione Bianchi Bandinelli, GBeA - Giovani Bibliotecari e Aspiranti, Associazione dei Lettori della Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Associazione degli Amici della Biblioteca Universitaria di Pisa, Società italiana per la museografia e i beni demoetnoantropologici — Simbdea, Coordinamento per gli archivi e le biblioteche, Associazione Italiana per le Scienze Etno-Antropologiche (AISEA), Associazione italiana dei docenti universitari di scienze archivistiche (AIDUSA), Società geografica italiana.

12 Codice dei beni culturali (d.lgs. 42/2004), art. 41.4.

13 Mozione del Consiglio superiore ‘beni culturali e paesaggistici’ sul patrimonio dell'Istituto italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente (IsIAO), November 16, 2015, http://www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/MiBAC/sito-MiBAC/MenuPrincipale/Minister o/Consiglio-Superiore/Audizioni-e-mozioni/ind ex.html.

14 The plan was first presented in 2014; by the end of 2014, the death of the owner of the museum, who bequeathed the building to the Municipality of Rome, seemed to have put an end to the plan. In September 2015, however, the plan surfaced again. Segretariato generale, Progetto nazionale di razionalizzazione degli spazi. Riduzione dei fitti passivi, slides presented to trade unions on November 12, 2014, and Agenzia del Demanio, report 2015/16857 of September 17, 2015.

15 Senators Petraglia, De Petris, Barozzino, Bocchino, Cervellini, De Cristofaro, Gotor, Mineo, Tocci, Interrogazione a risposta scritta 4-04928, December 3, 2015. Senator Luzzi, Interrogazione a risposta scritta 4-04954.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giulia Barrera

Giulia Barrera ([email protected]) holds a PhD in African History from Northwestern University and is an archivist and historian at the Italian Directorate General of Archives. Her scholarly interests focus on issues of gender and race in colonial Eritrea, and on the intersections between archives, citizens' rights, and human rights. She has published over 25 scholarly papers and has coedited a few finding aids and a volume on Asmara's architecture and urban planning in the IsIAO's holdings.

I wish to thank Paola D'Amore, curator at the National Museum of Oriental Art “Giuseppe Tucci,” and Egidio Cossa, curator at the National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography “Luigi Pigorini,” for providing information on the IsIAO's holdings and their predicament. All translations from Italian are mine. All online resources were accessed in December 2015.