Naples, 160 artifacts from the National Archaeological Museum go on a trip to Japan

The National Archaeological Museum of Naples is going away to Japan: as many as 160 artifacts from the great Neapolitan museum, starting January 14, will in fact take the road to the Rising Sun for a major exhibition on Pompeii in several stages, the first of which will be held at the National Museum of Tokyo, Japan’s oldest museum institution, which specializes in Nipponese and, more generally, Asian antiquities (and for which the MANN exhibition will be the first major post-pandemic review). The event has been discussed for some time, and there had even been a controversy that arose as a result of the suggestion that the world-famous Alexander Mosaic should also leave for the Japanese capital. In fact, the complex restoration of the work, which will be completed by December 31, 2022, has been financed by a number of Japanese entities-The Asahi Shimbun, NHK, NHK Promotion, and The Asahi Shimbun. The mosaic, however, will remain in Italy.

The Japanese exhibition will run until December 2022: after the first stop in Tokyo, which ends on April 3, the exhibition will tour to Kyoto (at the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art), and to Fukuoka, at the Kyushu National Museum. Titled Pompeii, the exhibition will tell the story of the links between the historical roots of the West and the East, “breaking” the thematic and geographic specialization of the Institute. The project was born in 2019 when the MANN signed a Framework Agreement with the Tokyo National Museum, with the aim of enhancing, with a major exhibition in the Land of the Rising Sun, knowledge of the culture of the ancient cities of Vesuvius. Subsequently, based also on the policy of promoting international relations implemented by the Ministry of Culture, the scientific project of the exhibition was developed, which included the cooperation of the Japanese Ministry of Culture, the Museums of Tokyo, Fukuoka and Kyoto, the Italian Embassy in Tokyo and the Italy Japan Foundation, among others. The exhibition is organized by The Asahi Shimbun newspaper and NHK, NHK Promotions Inc (Nippon Hoso Kyokai - Japan Broadcasting Corporation).

As mentioned above, The Asahi Shimbun is among the funders of the restoration of the Alexander Mosaic, an activity that is also supported by the collaboration of the Higher Institute for Restoration of the MIC: the first phase of securing the work will be followed, in the coming months, by the handling of the artifact, in order to directly analyze the state of conservation of the original support, which is not accessible at the moment, and to fully define the interventions to be carried out. The restoration will be completed by December 31, 2022, and the work will be conducted in a construction site open to visitors.

The exhibition route will be divided into five sections: the first, introductory, will be on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the burial of Pompeii, the second on the city of Pompeii (public architecture and religion), the third on Pompeian society, the fourth will focus on the city’s economy, and the fifth will offer an overview of the history of the excavations (of Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabiae and Somma Vesuviana) from its origins to the present. A common thread running through the exhibition, curated by, among others, MANN Director Paolo Giulierini and Masanori Aoyagi, Commissioner for Cultural Activities in Japan, is the link between cities (Pompeii, Herculaneum, Tokyo, Kagoshima) and volcanoes. The exhibition will start from 79 A.D. and the burial of Pompeii to retrace, almost backwards, those cycles of destruction and subsequent reconstruction that civilized communities have enacted since antiquity. On display at the Tokyo National Museum, until April 3, 2022, will be archaeological contexts from the Houses of the Faun, the Citarist and the Tragic Poet. In addition, also thanks to the excavation work in the deposits, revealing furnishings (bronzes and glass), sculptures and frescoes that decorated Roman domus and public buildings, the exhibition will give evidence of the material culture that characterized the Vesuvian area as a whole. A reconstruction of the walls of the Villa of Cicero in Pompeii was also created ad hoc for the exhibition, thanks to the combination of fragments of wall decorations, such as the famous tightrope walker satyrs: the project was signed by archaeologist Rosaria Ciardiello and photographers Luciano and Marco Pedicini.

“With Japan,” says Paolo Giulierini, “we have embarked on an important cultural journey, which began two years ago now; art builds bridges between peoples, and the final outcomes of this operation, which I believe may perhaps be the most important in Japanese-Italian relations, consist of two objectives: the restoration of the Alexander Mosaic, made possible also thanks to the generous contribution of The Asahi Shimbun, and the realization of the great exhibition on Pompeii, organized by The Asahi Shimbun and NHK. This exhibition brings to Japan artifacts from known contexts and intends to delve into fundamental sectors of the life of the famous Vesuvian city: moving from the discovery, which has been the fortune of Western archaeology, to the analysis of the everyday dimension, which brings closer the sensitivities of peoples, distant in time and space, but still linked by the need to cope with the adversities of nature.”

Image: reconstruction of a wall of Cicero’s villa. Photo by Pedicini Photographers

Naples, 160 artifacts from the National Archaeological Museum go on a trip to Japan

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