The Rediscovered Nativity Scene

A new temporary exhibition dedicated to the Nativity scene, an annual event rooted in the museum’s tradition. However, this is not the usual exhibition narrative, but a true path of research and reconstruction aimed at bringing to light a history that has been fragmented and dispersed over time.

The exhibition originates from the project to reassemble a dismantled Nativity scene by bringing together groups of works now preserved in different locations. The starting point is the Brocherel Collection, which entered the MAV in 2009 from the Civic Museum of Ancient Art in Turin, accompanied by the subsequent discovery of additional fragments held by the Superintendency for Cultural Heritage of the Aosta Valley Region. Sculptures in soapstone, incomplete and separated, are once again brought into dialogue through an exhibition design that makes the research process itself visible.

The exhibition route leads visitors behind the scenes of scholarly work, through studies, comparisons, and hypotheses of reconstruction, perhaps for the first time in nearly a century since the works were housed in the Bottega d’Arte Paesana of Jules Brocherel. The exhibition invites reflection on the value of research as a tool for knowledge and for the restitution of cultural identity.