The National Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions is the only state museum in Italy with specific expertise in the field of demo-ethno-anthropological subjects. Its purpose is the documentation of popular traditions from all Italian regions and it preserves over one hundred thousand documents, acquired from 1906 to today.
The Museum originated from the Italian Ethnography Exhibition held in Rome in 1911 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Unification of Italy and was founded by Lamberto Loria (1855-1913), an ethnologist who, after carrying out numerous study expeditions in non-European countries, realized during a short stay in Sannio that ethnographic research also needed to be conducted in early 20th century Italy. It was indeed necessary to document that agro-pastoral culture which at the time was undergoing significant changes due to the progressive industrialization of nearby and distant areas and the consequent emigration from rural centers.
All of the Museum’s documentary material is currently accessible to the public through numerous services: the library, the historical archive which preserves documents regarding the acquisition of objects, the print cabinet, the photographic archive, the sound archive, the visual anthropology archive, the ethnographic deposits, the inventory, cataloging and loans office, the restoration laboratory, and the audiovisual laboratory. The Museum, due to its specificity and uniqueness throughout the national territory, is also a center for data collection, research, and documentation.
