New collections within the University museum system

27.11.2023

A new historical-artistic collections area is now available within the University of Padua museum system. Already offering collections from the medical, naturalistic, and technical-scientific areas, a new "Artwork Collection" is now included.

Artworks include those from the collection of Luigi Chieco-Bianchi donated to the Immunology and Molecular Diagnostics Area of the Department of Surgery, Oncology and Gastroenterology Sciences (DiSCOG). The private art collection includes works from several important Italian artists from the second half of the 20th century to the early 2000s, such as Tasca, Plessi, Massironi and Soccol.

Additionally, the technical-scientific area of the museum system now includes a collection of Japanese works held at Villa Revedin-Bolasco in Castelfranco of the Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry (TESAF). The works include 80 cardboard boxes of non-edible mulberry fibre each marked with a particular stamp and ideograms used to transport silkworms from Japan to Italy. When an epidemic struck Italian silkworms in the second half of the 19th century the demand to find healthy larvae pushed research as far as Japan. The collection constitutes the largest private collection of its kind, concrete evidence of the flourishing silk farming industry in Italy at the time.

The Museum of Nature and Humankind dedicated its Mineralogy section after the curator and geologist Alessandro Guastoni of Mineralogy who recently passed away.