San Francisco, 9 February 2013
The de Young Museum – Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco – displays from 9 February to 8 September 2013 a unique series of 39 African, Oceanic and Native American works from the collections of the Ethnological Museum of the Vatican, reflecting various religious cultures.
The set design highlights local and general significance of these objects, as well as the history of their collecting. Thus, among the masterpieces, two masks and three engravings obtained in 1691 by Father Francisco Romero in Santa Maria in the Sierra Nevada, three figurative sculptures representing gods Tu and Tupo sent by the first missionary from Mangareva (Gambier Islands) to Pope Gregory XVI in 1837, or an Aztec sculpture from Quetzalcoatl from the 15th century.
This exhibition takes place within the framework of the renovation of the Ethnological Museum of Vatican, which is expected to reopen in 2014. The de Young Museum had already collaborated with the Vatican in 1982 for the exhibition “The Vatican Collections: Papacy and Art” that already included 15 pieces from the Ethnological Museum of Papal States.