EXHIBITION "UN MUSÉE POUR L'ÉCOLE " (A MUSEUM FOR THE ÉCOLE)

Gallery of the École française de Rome - Piazza Navona, 62
29 May - 20 December 2024

This exhibition is part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the École française de Rome.

Curated by Christian Mazet (Université libre de Bruxelles) and Paolo Tomassini (Université catholique de Louvain), former scientific members of the École française de Rome.

From May to December 2024, the exhibition "Un museo per l'École" ('A Museum for the École') will present to the public an unprecedented collection of archaeological objects preserved at the École française de Rome. This collection was collected primarily by the École's first director, Auguste Geffroy, with the intention of endowing the institution with a collection of antiquities for scientific and educational purposes. It was recently studied by archaeologists Christian Mazet and Paolo Tomassini, both former scientific members of the EFR, who reconstructed the eventful history of its establishment.

This temporary exhibition in the l'École gallery in Piazza Navona will be followed by a digital version and a permanent exhibition in Palazzo Farnese from 2025.

Project supported by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research (2023) with the collaboration of the association des Amis de l'École française de Rome and the Réseau des Écoles françaises à l'étranger.

The curators

Christian Mazet is an archaeologist, ceramologist and historian of archaeology, specialising in Greek and pre-Roman material culture and the history of 19th century antiquarian collections. An alumnus of the École du Louvre, with a degree in museology, he is Research Assistant at the Institut national d'histoire de l'art from 2014 to 2018 and holds a doctorate from the École Pratique des Hautes Études - Université PSL (2020). He was a scientific member of the Antiquities section of the EFR (2019-2022), a fellow of the National Institute of Etruscan and Italic Studies and a Research Fellow at the Sapienza University of Rome (2022-2023). Winner of the Roger Lambrechts Prize awarded by the Royal Academy of Belgium for his research on the Bonaparte excavations at Vulci, he is currently a post-doctoral researcher (CIVIS3i Fellow) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and co-directs an archaeological mission in the eastern necropolis of Vulci.

Paolo Tomassini is an archaeologist specialising in the study of ancient Roman decoration and architecture. A PhD student at the Catholic University of Leuven (2017) and former member of the École française de Rome (2019-2022), he is currently a researcher at the University of Namur (Belgium) and an invited associate professor at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium. His work mainly focuses on Roman mural painting and the work of ancient painters, but he also works on virtual archaeology, digital reconstructions and construction archaeology. For several years he has been working on the site of Ostia Antica, where he is responsible for archaeological excavations carried out by Belgian institutions.

Practical information

Exhibition open to the public from 29 May to 20 December 2024 in the gallery of the École française de Rome (Piazza Navona, 62).

Days and opening hours, from 29 May 2024

• Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
• exceptional closures:
  • Saturday 29 June
  • Thursday 8 August to Sunday 25 August
  • Friday 1 November
  • Monday 11 November.

Free admission