Museo degli sguardi

The Museo degli Sguardi in Rimini shows how Westerners have, over time, looked at other peoples, their cultures, their ways of life and their artistic expression. The exhibition brings together items collected across various continents by travellers and collectors, and is an invitation to reflect, to travel, to wonder and to understand others.

Good to know

• The Museo degli Sguardi is housed in a 1721 villa built by Giovanni Antonio de Alvarado, secretary for Italy to Emperor Charles VI.
• Marc Augè is the President of the museum's Comitato Ordinatore and developed the curatorial project behind the display, characterised by a light-touch exhibition with few but significant items on show, short texts and "super-signage".
• At the entrance to the museum are a series of frosted display cases showing only the shadows and outlines of the objects kept inside. This opacity suggests the idea that the encounter between cultures can be an unsettled one, and also hints at the fact that much of this museum's material is kept in storage, still waiting to be brought to light and put on display.

Other information

The museum is organised into several routes: the "scientific" route reflects the traditional ethnographic museum approach, with a geographical and thematic layout, displaying pre-Columbian American finds, with items from the Maya, Inca and Aztec peoples, and objects from Africa and Oceania. Two further routes, that of wonder and that of aesthetics, focus instead on the cultural and artistic impressions that "other" cultures inspire in those who observe them.