Jewish museums across Italy have joined forces in a collaborative online project aimed at introducing their rich collections to virtual audiences stuck at home by COVID-19 quarantines, lockdowns, and shelter-in-place measures. Organizers say they want to expand the project into an active nationwide network.
With more COVID-19 deaths than any other European country, Italy has been in nationwide lockdown since March 9; emergency measures are now slated to remain in force until at least May 4. Under the measures, all museums, including the country’s score of Jewish museums or permanent exhibitions, had to close their doors to visitors.
In response to the crisis and shut-down, Italy’s 10 main Jewish museums launched a joint project at the end of March called “Musei Ebraici Italiani – #ItaliaEbraica” (Italian Jewish Museums – #JewishItaly), which aims to reach people at home, entertain them, and show that museums stay alive and offer cultural activities even during a pandemic.
The participating museums (so far) have included those in Florence, Rome, Pisa, Venice, Siena, Bologna, Padova, Trieste, and Casale Monferrato, as well as the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah (MEIS) in Ferrara.
The project’s first joint initiative debuted on social media channels for Passover. During the Passover week, each museum dedicated posts to different aspects of the festival, showing an object from its collection or recounting a fact or story from the local community. All were posted using the common hashtags #Italiaebraica and #PesachOnline.
On April 12, for example, museums presented traditional Passover recipes from their community; on April 14 they posted traditional Passover songs. On April 8, ahead of the Seder, they posted a video in which the director of each Jewish museum described local Haggadot.
Museums are also tagging their individual online activities — virtual tours, apps, newsletters, data banks, and social media campaigns — with the general #Italiaebraica hashtag in order to link them within the general joint project.
A version of the Passover video subtitled in English was released on April 20 – watch it here:
Olga Melasecchi, director of the Rome Jewish Museum, told JHE that the museums had been inspired to create a cooperative network thanks to the meetings and connections forged via participation in the Association of European Jewish Museums (AEJM) and its annual conferences, the latest of which took place in November at the MEIS in Ferrara.
“Thanks to the AEJM annual meetings [we] had the chance to know each other, and the respective initiatives and realities” she said, “so we asked ourselves: why don’t we create a national network on our own?”
Already at the 2019 AEJM annual conference, Italian Jewish museums presented a first collaborative effort, a book of essays on Italian Jewish art honoring the art historian Dr. Vivian Mann, who died in May 2019. Called “Jewish Italy, Rediscovered Stories: Essays in honor of Vivian Mann z.l”, the bilingual Italian-English book contains contributions from Italian Jewish museum directors and professionals.
Michela Zanon, responsible for the public services at the Venice Jewish Museum, told JHE that the 10 museums currently involved in the initiative would like to extend the network to include other small Jewish museums operating in Italy that so far were left out because of timing — museums or permanent exhibits in towns including Pitigliano, Lecce, Asti, Fondi, Genova, Gorizia, Livorno, Merano, and Soragna.
“The idea would be to create a sort of ‘Italian AEJM,’ through which the bigger museums could help the small ones to promote their rich collections and artifacts, and assist them with the professional support they may need, such as the study and identification of Judaica objects,” said Olga Melasecchi.
“Moreover, ” she added, “we would like to raise awareness regarding the ‘hidden’ treasures hosted in communities that have no museums whatsoever.”