Umbra Students Help Create Risorgimento Exhibit
Two Umbra students presented their part of a local museum’s exhibit on Italian unification.
This year is the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Italy as a national state. History here, as everywhere, is always a battleground, and the anniversary of the unification is no exception as battles for the meaning of the Italian state—was it for the better or not—rage.
Last Friday one of the Umbra Institute’s community partners, the Palazzo Sorbello House Museum, had the grand opening of its exhibit Dal Risorgimento all’Unità d’Italia. Documents and Images from the collections of the Palazzo Sorbello dedicated to the questions of the unification movement, known in Italy as the Risorgimento, and its local ramifications: the liberation of Perugia from the dominion of the Pope.
Two Umbra students, Alex Hanken and Elise Fitzgerald, were present and took part in the ceremony. The two students had, with professor Antonella Valoroso, curated a section of the exhibit, contributing both background research on the American involvement in the Risorgimento and a thorough archival search which resulted in an unregistered find, a copy of the Italian classic I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) signed by the translator. The Umbra-portion of the exhibit was completed as a service learning project in the Honors course “Constructing a National Identity. History, Culture, Art and Society in 19th Century Italy”.
In the photo: Alex Hanken, Prof. Antonella Valoroso, Elise Fitzgerald, and (in the back) Prof. Ruggero Ranieri.