Encounters of distant worlds

The exhibition offers a long and enthralling tale, starting with the figures and exploits of some of Lombardy's most important explorers of the 19th century and ending with the research carried out over more than sixty years by Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni from Varese on the African continent and in Amazonia, making the public the importance of their immense documentary and film archiveincreasingly valuable, at a time when the profound transformations underway risk erasing the fragile traces of cultures that, until a few decades ago, relied on oral tradition.

The visitor is called upon to take an opposite path than that of modern-day migration processes, a theme that acts as a counterpoint, in the background, inviting us to look at those who come from worlds that are mostly unknown or only superficially known in a different light. It is a journey that invites us to meet and learn about cultures capable of surviving in extreme environments and of managing resources sustainably, a valuable lesson for the present and the future.