By presenting the exhibition Ciao Italia! The National Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris is telling for the first time on a national scale the story of Italian immigration in France. Italy remains one of the most important sources of immigrants to this day. From the middle of the nineteenth century until the 1960s, Italians made up the largest number of foreigners coming to metropolitan France to take up jobs created by the growth of the economy. Celebrated today, yet their integration didn’t always go smoothly. Between demeaning prejudice and a benevolent gaze, the image of the Italians in France took shape paradoxically and the way they were received was difficult.
Between apprehension and desire, violence and passion, rejection and integration, the exhibition conveys the specific contradictions of this immigration’s history by spotlighting the Italians’ contribution to French society and culture. Playing with the clichés and the prejudices of the time and recalling the xenophobia of which they were victims, the exhibition fixes on retracing the geographic, socio-economic and cultural journey of Italian immigrants in France from the Risorgimento in the 1860s to the Dolce Vita made famous by Fellini in 1960. Covering religion, the press, education, the arts, music and the cinema, and even gastronomy, it shows all the Italians; labourers, miners, bricklayers, farmers, tradespeople and even entrepreneurs who have made France, by paying homage to the most well-known among them: Yves Montand, Serge Reggiani, Lino Ventura and also the Bugatti and Ponticelli families. In an original and fertile dialogue there are almost four hundred memorabilia, film extracts, maps and works of art that are presented in a journey, both sensitive and educational, which features the artists Giovanni Boldini, Giuseppe de Nittis, Gino Severini, Filippo De Pisis, Massimo Campigli, Alberto Magnelli, Leonardo Cremonini, Amedeo Modigliani, Giulia Andreani, Julie Polidoro and Vittorio Santoro.
“With this exhibition and, without doubt, earlier ones,” Hélène Orain, director of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, explained, “the National Museum of the History of Immigration is succeeding in developing the specifics of a museum style that must be its DNA: to present a story that combines the work of historians – rich with education for the present – with the view of artists –and the sensitive relationship to the works they generate – and with that of the actors and witnesses who embody this history. The curators – Dominique Païni, Stéphane Mourlane et Isabelle Renard – have patiently constructed these conversations between history, works of art, and memory, so often evoked, avoiding the trap of artificial superimposition, during the two years spent in the preparation of the project.”
Ciao Italia! Un siècle d’immigration et de culture italiennes en France (1860-1960)
From 28th March to 10th Septmber 2017
Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration
293 Avenue Daumesnil
75012 Paris
France
