Mostra Augustea della Romanità

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The Mostra Augustea della Romanità ( Augustan Exhibition of Romanism ) was one of the numerous archaeological events with which the 2000th birthday of the Roman Emperor Augustus , the Bimillenario Augusteo , was celebrated in fascist Italy in 1938 .

prehistory

For the 50th anniversary of the Italian monarchy in 1911, Rodolfo Lanciani and his assistant Giulio Quirino Giglioli showed a show with originals and plaster copies on the archeology of the Roman Empire in the Diocletian's Baths . In 1927, the archeology professor and head of cultural affairs in Rome, Giglioli, founded a Museo della Romanità, which was to consolidate the theme of the 1911 exhibition with plaster models and replicas.

In 1932 Giglioli and other antiquity activists, especially Carlo Galassi Paluzzi from the Istituto di Studi Romani , proposed to Mussolini a large-scale program of archaeological and antiquity activities for the Augustus anniversary. In addition to further large-scale excavations in Italy and the redesign of the Piazza Augusto Imperatore in Rome ( Augustus mausoleum , Ara Pacis ), the Mostra Augustea, with a positivist claim to completeness, should surpass the collection of the Museo della Romanità. In direct contact with Mussolini, Giglioli organized the exhibition with young employees such as Antonio Maria Colini , Carlo Pietrangeli , Giuseppe Lugli and Maria Floriani Squarciapino . Compared to previous exhibitions, the concept has changed: the first 26 rooms followed the chronology of Romulus and Remus up to the Constantinian late antiquity and were mostly architecturally equipped. Room 10 (Augustus) formed a creative highlight as a cult room - a montage of Augustus sculptures and the text of the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke on a hypermodern glass stele. Room 26 propagated fascism as the conclusive climax of Italian history . With mostly less architectural effort, the remaining halls illustrated certain topics such as bridge building, clothing, theater, etc. a. m.

concept

From September 23, 1937 to November 4, 1938, the Mostra Augustea showed replicas, models and other types of exhibits in 80 halls in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Via Nazionale in Rome, which illustrate the greatness of Roman civilization and stage it as a model for fascist Italy should. With more than 700,000 visitors, the exhibition was - alongside the repeated Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista - one of the largest events in the fascist exhibition cult. The Mostra Augustea received attention from the archaeological press as well as the international daily press. The roughly five-year lead-up to the anniversary celebrations in general and the preparation of the exhibition in particular were loudly accompanied by the media, especially the Italian daily press.

In terms of museum and archaeological didactics, the Mostra Augustea was a modern and forward-looking specialty at the time: It did not present original finds according to certain formal criteria such as style, genre or artist, but instead presented plaster casts of sculptures and architectural parts, scale models of buildings and everyday objects (mostly in galvanoplastic copies ) thematically together. For example, many amphitheaters in the Roman Empire could be compared in size based on the same scale. The model of ancient Rome created by Italo Gismondi was a special attraction .

Aftermath

After its closure, Giglioli successfully came up with the idea of ​​introducing the Mostra Augustea as a Mostra della Civiltà Romana (exhibition of Roman civilization) in the world exhibition planned for 1942 in the new EUR district south of Rome. After Italy entered World War II , the World's Fair, which was to become the core of a new city district, was soon canceled. But Giglioli succeeded in having the exhibition building sponsored by FIAT completed at the beginning of the 1950s and in establishing a permanent exhibition - only cleared of all too clear propaganda references. It still exists today under the name Museo della Civiltà Romana and despite the fact that its origins are time-bound, it can clearly convey the ancient Roman past.

In autumn 2014, the Istituto di Studi Romani organized a conference on the Bimillenario Augusteo from 1938 in order to deepen the state of research achieved in the mid-1990s.

literature

  • Mostra Augustea, Catalogo . 2 volumes, 4a edizione definitiva, Rome 1938
  • Relazione morale e finanziaria . Rome 1942
  • Autori vari (Different authors): Dalla mostra al museo - Dalla Mostra archeologica del 1911 al Museo della civiltà romana . Venice 1983, esp. Pp. 77-90
  • AM Liberati Silverio: La Mostra Augustea della Romanità - L'allestimento della facciata, il progetto e l'organizzazione delle sale, il consuntivo della manifestazione, l'eredità . In: AA.VV .: Il Palazzo delle Esposizioni Rome 1990, pp. 223-227
  • Friedemann Scriba: Augustus in the black shirt? The Mostra Augustea della Romanità in Rome 1937/38 . Frankfurt / M. 1994
  • Friedemann Scriba: Il mito di Roma, l'estetica e gli intellettuali negli anni del Consenso - La Mostra Augustea della Romanità 1937/38 . In: Quaderni di Storia 21, 41, 1995, pp. 67-84
  • Friedemann Scriba: The Sacralization of the Roman Past in Mussolini's Italy - Erudition, Aesthetics, and Religion in the Exhibition of Augustus' Bimillenary in 1937–1938 . In: Storia della Storiografia 30, 1996, pp. 19-29