Colonial Objects: The Material Culture of Italian Colonialism

Focusing on the dialectical relationship between the facture of objects and the meanings they produce, the conference seeks to interrogate colonial artefacts and, through them, to test theories of material culture. Scholars will present analyses centred on specific artistic, artisanal, or industrial objects, with the aim of reframing the history of Italian colonialism through material culture, and elucidating how it shaped ideas, representations, and memories.

The conference is organized as part of the research unit Decolonizing Italian Visual and Material Culture of the Department Weddigen at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, in collaboration with the Contemporary History section of the German Historical Institute in Rome.
A joint event will take place on March 26th 2026 at the Italian Academy, Columbia University, New York with the generous support of the Ragusa Foundation for the Humanities.

Participation online possible through our VIMEO CHANNEL. The link will be published soon here.

PROGRAM

Thursday 4 December 2025

09.00 – 09:30 Welcome & opening remarks
Carmen Belmonte (Università di Padova; Bibliotheca Hertziana – Istituto Max Planck per la Storia dell’arte)
Laura Moure Cecchini (Università di Padova)
Nicola Camilleri (Maynooth University; Università Roma Tre)
Bianca Gaudenzi (Università di Firenze; Wolfson College, University of Cambridge)

09:30 – 13.00 Panel I: Propaganda and its Legacies
Chair: Tristan Weddigen (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Istituto Max Planck per la Storia dell’arte)

Agnese Ghezzi (Libera Università di Bolzano)
Bound Memories: Colonial Propaganda and the Material Life of a Photographic Album

Sara Vitacca (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, Centre Lucien Febvre, Besançon)
Metallic Propaganda: The Medagliere Libico and the Role of Medals in Forging Italian Colonial Narratives

11:00 - 11:30 COFFEE BREAK

Chair: Raffaele Bedarida (Sapienza, Università di Roma)

Paolo Novak (SOAS, London)
Everyday coloniality and migration in a central Italian province

Livia Dubon Bohlig (Kingston University London)
Colonial Photography as Sensorial Object: Embodied Listening and the Adwa Case Study

13:00 – 14:00 LUNCH (only for speakers and chairs)

14.00 – 16:15 Panel II: The Empire at Home
Chair: Petra Terhoeven (Istituto Storico Germanico di Roma)

Victoria Witkowski (University of Southern Denmark, Odense)
Playing Empire: Fascist-era Board Games and their Postcolonial Echoes

Chiara Rubessi (ISIA Design Firenze; ISIA Design Roma)
Gli arredi di Carlo Bugatti come agenti di significato nel contesto coloniale italiano

Tommaso Mammini (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona)
A Colonial Whip between Personal Memory and Fascist Ideology

16.15 – 16.45 COFFEE BREAK

16:45 – 19:00 Panel III: Colonial nature
Chair: Lorenzo Benadusi (Università Roma Tre)

Tairan An (gta Institute, ETH Zurich)
Anatomy of a Skin: Logistics, the Lodge, and Italian Colonial Ornithology

Tiziana N. Beltrame & Luca Tonetti (Università di Padova)
Storie di carta: buste e campioni di un botanico in missione in Tripolitania

Virginia Magnaghi (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Istituto Max Planck per la Storia dell’arte)
The Uegit Meteorite: Towards a Material History of the Italian Colonial Landscape through a Celestial Body

Friday 5 December 2025

9.00 – 12:30 Panel IV: Spoliation and Restitution
Chair: Uoldelul Chelati Dirar (Università di Macerata)

Lorenzo Declich (ISMEO, Roma)
Metaoggetti coloniali: inventari e liste del Museo coloniale di Roma

Thomas Demewez (Addis Ababa University)
Tracing the Trajectories of Ethiopian Material Culture linked to Italian Colonialism: Ras Desta Damtew Attires in Italian Collections in Focus

10.30 – 11.00 COFFEE BREAK

Chair: Laura Iamurri (Università Roma Tre)

Silvia Iannelli (Università di Padova e Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia)
The Wakka of the Konso People of Southern Ethiopia: From Spoliation to Re-Signification

Giulia Beatrice (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Istituto Max Planck per la Storia dell’arte)
Tsehai’s Flight. Looting, Memory, and the Making of Colonial “Aeroculture”

12:30 – 13:30 LUNCH (only for speakers and chairs)

13:30 – 17:00 Panel V: The Empire in the Museum
Chair: Gaia Delpino (Museo delle Civiltà, Roma)

Antonella Gioli (Università di Pisa)
Una bandiera etiope e altri oggetti da Addis Abeba a Livorno: manufatti, musealizzazione e cultura visiva

Marco Foravalle (Scuola IMT Alti Studi, Lucca)
Exhibiting Colonial Subjugation: The Tricolour Shield of Dejaz Hapte Mikael in the Royal Armoury of Turin

15:00 - 15:15 COFFEE BREAK

Chair: Rosa Anna Di Lella (Museo delle Civiltà, Roma)

Matilde Vernuccio (Università di Torino)
Il lämd di däğğazmač Habtä Mika’el. Interpretazioni conflittuali sulla provenienza di un manto etiopico

Davide Zendri (MITAG - Museo Storico italiano della Guerra, Rovereto)
Dono, negoziazione, sottrazione, rappresentazione: Il Revolver a cinque canne sistema Pepperbox, Cirenaica, Libia, metà sec. XIX

Final discussion

Scientific Organization:

Carmen Belmonte (Università di Padova; Bibliotheca Hertziana – MPI)

Laura Moure Cecchini (Università di Padova)

Nicola Camilleri (Maynooth University; Università Roma Tre)

Bianca Gaudenzi (Università di Firenze; Wolfson College, University of Cambridge)