Scots Italians Exhibition at NRS
A new archive exhibition, ‘Family Portrait: The Scots Italians 1890 – 1940’, opens next week at National Records of Scotland, created in partnership with the Italian Consulate General of Italy in Scotland. The exhibition features a hidden archive of Italians living in Scotland in the years before the Second World War.
The unique census of many of the Italians living in Scotland in the 1930s opens a window into the family life and businesses of generations of people who had migrated to Scotland from rural Italy. They adapted and thrived as shopkeepers and café proprietors, mosaic workers and hairdressers, carpenters and cobblers.
Come face to face with the Scots Italians, and discover documents, photographs and objects loaned by descendants of the people who feature in the 1930s census. The exhibition puts the Scots Italians of the 1930s on the map through specially-created graphics. A documentary project by Lorenzo Colantoni and Riccardo Venturi features contemporary Scots Italians and the landscape of Scotland.
The exhibition has been developed with invaluable support from the Italian Cultural Institute in Edinburgh, the Italo-Scottish Research Cluster (Edinburgh University), the National Library of Scotland and Transnationalizing Modern Languages (AHRC-funded project). A new book by Dr Terri Colpi, ‘Italians’ Count in Scotland: The 1993 Census’ will be available from the NRS shop during the exhibition.
Family Portrait: The Scots Italians 1890 – 1940’ will be on show at General Register House, 2 Princes Street, Edinburgh, from 3 December 2015 until 29 January 2016 (closed 25 & 28 December, 1 & 4 January), free entry.
For further information and detailed opening hours please visit:
http://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/news/2015/scots-italians-exhibition-at-nrs
free exhibition