Dipartimento di Studi Storici

Federica Merlo graduated in 2015 from Brera Academy of Fine Arts (Milan) with a Bachelor’s degree in Disciplines of Valorisation of Cultural Heritage. Her thesis focused on reconstructing the history of a disused 19th-century prison located in Busto Arsizio (Varese) through archival documents preserved in the local city hall and chapter library’s archives. Her study culminated in her participation in the organization of two study days dedicated to the presentation of the 19th-century prison and to the discussion of ideas for its conservation and enhancement.

She later specialized with a Master of Arts in Creative Communication for Cultural Heritage at Brera Academy of Fine Arts (Milan). During her studies, an internship at the Museum of Criminal anthropology ‘Cesare Lombroso’ of the University of Turin granted her the possibility to study the collection of handwritten letters, manuscripts and documents gathered by Dr. Cesare Lombroso from psychiatric hospitals and prisons during the second half of the 19th-century. The aim of the research was to delve into Lombroso’s medical, academic and collecting activities, shed new light on some of his fields of study that are still scarcely investigated to date - namely the writing and graphology -, and better understand his relationship with the secluded subjects. She discussed her thesis in 2019, which was awarded with the ‘Equita per Accademia di Brera’ Merit scholarship and was then published on peer-reviewed academic journals.

In 2021 she obtained a Research scholarship at the Department of Neurosciences ‘Rita Levi Montalcini’ of the University of Turin, which granted her the possibility to continue her collaboration with the Museum ‘Cesare Lombroso’ in order to overhaul the ‘Lombroso Project’ online database with Dr. Cesare Lombroso’s correspondence, catalogue newly-acquired letters and digitalize the volumes from the scientist’s library.

Her research interests focus on 19th- to early-20th-century cultural, historical and artistic context, on museology and on the history of collections.

Alongside her studies, from 2014 she gained professional experience by cataloguing and studying 19th- and 20th-century artworks and archival materials for both public and private Institutions in Italy. Among them, the Drawings and Prints Department at Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, the Archive of the sculptor Pietro Consagra in Milan, IULM University in Milan, the Historical Archive of the Vatican Museums in Rome.

The ‘art of the insane’ in the collections of the Museum of Criminal anthropology ‘Cesare Lombroso’ and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University of Turin. Research and exhibition hypotheses.

In 2016, the University of Turin's University Museum System (SMA – Sistema Museale di Ateneo), in collaboration with Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, started a project on cataloguing the series of Writings and Drawings of Madmen and Alienated people and Writings of Criminals, which are preserved in the Historical Archive of the Museum of Criminal Anthropology ‘Cesare Lombroso’. They consist of handwritten and printed documents, letters, autographs, literary and poetic compositions, and drawings resulting from the free expression of mentally ill people who were secluded in asylums, and of inmates in confinement facilities, i.e. those who were considered to transcend the concept of norm. The results of the work highlighted the complexity of these documents and the need to conduct a precise and in-depth study in order to fully understand their meaning and proceed to their correct valorisation.

The objects exhibited in rooms 5 (Art, Genius and Madness) and 6 (Criminal Minds) of the Museum ‘Cesare Lombroso’ deserve the same attention, as they are of the same nature: they were intended by the scientist as instruments of empirical research, aimed at demonstrating his theories on the subject of deviance, i.e. of ‘variations from the norm’ that included criminals and insane people, as well as persons of genius, in both negative and positive meanings (consider, in this regard, the various editions of Lombroso’s book The Man of Genius).

A similar approach should be adopted for the objects of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, that were made by patients of the Royal Psychiatric Hospitals of Turin (in particular Collegno) and collected by Antonio and Giovanni Marro, who saw them as mere representations of the art of alienated people or as ‘museological curiosities’.

In some cases, the artefacts in the two collections seem to have been made by the same authors. Therefore, it seems necessary to attempt a comparative study.

These objects can all be included within what was then classified as ‘art of the insane’ (Lombroso, 1880) and was later called, with different meanings, ‘art brut’ (Jean Dubuffet, 1945), ‘outsider art’ (Roger Cardinal, 1972), ‘irregular art’ (Bianca Tosatti, 1990s).

A comprehensive study of the individual works of the ‘art of the insane’ in the two university museums is lacking to date. Therefore, this project aims to deepen our knowledge of them by adopting a twofold research perspective.

As for the medical and scientific purposes that prompted the original choice of preserving and exhibiting these artefacts, the objective is to investigate the authorship of the works, the context of their origin, the practices linked to their circulation and their study by the scientists who were the protagonists, together with Lombroso, of the contemporary debate on psychic distress and criminality, as well as their role in the construction of Lombroso's theories on atavism and the genius-madness binomial. In Giovanni Marro's case, only two publications on these topics are known nowadays: this research will provide an opportunity to deepen his thought on the subject.

At the same time, on the basis of the nature and aesthetic value of the artefacts, this project seeks to delve into the strategies and methods that Italian and international museums and archives adopt today to present similar works to the public.

Firstly, the research activity will focus on the collections of the two museums: objects, artworks and documents will be taken into consideration in order to identify single works or series that are particularly significant. At the same time, attempts will be made to verify the existence of links that have been lost over time due to the separation of these objects by type (e.g. the possibility of tracing an artefact and a drawing back to the same author).

The selection of works to be studied will also depend on the possibility of identifying the contexts and institutions of provenance of the works. Research will be carried out at the archives that preserve the still existing documentation on the authors. The project seeks to answer questions regarding their biographical and clinical history, as well as their treatment inside asylums and prisons and the ways that the contemporary scientific community adopted to study the products of their creativity.

Secondly, the analysis of relevant case studies of national and international museums and archives that preserve similar works and documents, that were once collected for reasons other than historical-artistic and aesthetic ones, will be useful to question the current approaches and methods adopted to study, exhibit and communicate such objects to the public.

The final aim of this project is to develop exhibition projects that will put objects and newly-acquired knowledge on display in both virtual or physical forms, through installations, temporary exhibitions or permanent displays within the Museum of Criminal anthropology ‘Cesare Lombroso’ and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography.