Museo internazionale delle marionette Antonio Pasqualino

The Museo internazionale delle marionette Antonio Pasqualino is a historical, cultural, and ethnographic institution in Palermo, Italy, dedicated to national, international, traditional, and contemporary puppetry. Founded in 1975 by the Association for the Conservation of Popular Traditions, it preserves a vast collection of over 5,000 items, including marionettes, hand puppets, shadow puppets, automata, and stage machines from across the globe. The museum holds the largest and most complete collection of pupi from the Palermo, Catania, and Neapolitan schools. It functions as a center for the safeguarding and promotion of this theatrical practice, which is deeply representative of Sicily's territorial identity. Recognized for its synergy between conservation and live performance, the institution was awarded the ICOM Italia Museum of the Year prize in 2017.

The museum's creation is inextricably linked to its founder, Antonio Pasqualino, a Palermo surgeon and anthropologist who died in 1995. Recognizing that mid-century economic and social transformations in Italy were alienating the traditional, working-class audience of the Opera dei Pupi, Pasqualino sought to save the practice from oblivion. As puppeteers closed their theaters and sold their theatrical props, known as mestieri, Pasqualino and his wife Janne Vibaek gathered texts, puppets, miniature theaters, and furnishings. In 1965, he established the Association for the Conservation of Popular Traditions with a group of intellectuals. After a decade of collecting, the association founded the museum in 1975 to restore this heritage to the public, initially featuring the Palermo school mestiere of the Gaspare Canino family and the Catania school mestiere from the theater of Natale Meli. From its inception, the museum combined museographic conservation with live performance, launching the Review of the Opera dei Pupi in 1975 to connect Sicilian puppeteers with audiences. In 1985, this review evolved into the Morgana Festival, expanding to include international puppetry traditions and contemporary art. The association also successfully supported the Opera dei Pupi candidacy for UNESCO recognition, leading to its proclamation as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001 and its inscription on the Representative List in 2008. Following Pasqualino's death, the museum was renamed in his honor.

The museum's holdings encompass over 5,000 works representing global puppetry traditions. While its core strength lies in the Sicilian Opera dei Pupi, the collection extends to hand puppets, shadow figures, automata, and stage machines from Europe, Asia, and Africa. It includes Japanese Bunraku puppets, Vietnamese water puppets, Chinese and Indonesian shadow puppets, and figures from India, Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia. The collection specifically features materials from puppet traditions that, like the Opera dei Pupi, have been declared UNESCO Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, such as the Indonesian Wayang Kulit and Wayang Golek and the Cambodian Sbek Thom. Furthermore, the museum actively commissions and collects contemporary artist puppets created for its new productions, bridging historical conservation with modern artistic expression. Supporting this collection is the Giuseppe Leggio library, devoted to puppet theater and folk traditions, alongside a video, film, and audio library.

The foundational acquisitions of the museum are the complete mestieri, or theatrical sets, of the Opera dei Pupi. These include the Palermo school set belonging to the historic Gaspare Canino family and the Catania school set from the theater of Natale Meli. The broader Sicilian pupi collection, the largest and most complete of its kind, features figures from four major historical theaters, two from Palermo, one from Catania, and one from Naples. Beyond traditional Sicilian pieces, the museum holds contemporary artist puppets by figures such as Renato Guttuso, Enrico Baj, and Tadeusz Kantor, the latter of whom also created set designs for the museum. Other notable items include historical playbills, set designs, and an eclectic array of international figures, ranging from traditional Asian puppets to modern creations resembling popular icons like Laurel and Hardy, or abstract figures made from everyday objects like bottle brushes and swim goggles.

The museum is currently housed in the former Hotel de France, a building of significant architectural and historical interest in the center of Palermo, situated just steps from the monumental Piazza Marina. Originally constructed in the eighteenth century as the palace of the Marquis Onofrio del Castillo, the structure took on its later identity in 1808. The museum and its library were previously located in the Palazzo Fatta del Bosco on Piazza Marina before moving to their present site at Piazzetta Niscemi. The small square where the museum sits was subsequently named Piazzetta Antonio Pasqualino in honor of the founder. The institution is spread across three floors, housing exhibition spaces, a bookshop, a library, a multimedia archive, and a dedicated performance space on the top floor capable of accommodating a large theater program.

The Museo internazionale delle marionette Antonio Pasqualino is located at Piazzetta Antonio Pasqualino 5, Palermo, Italy. It is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, and Sunday and Monday from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm, with the last admission thirty minutes before closure. The museum maintains an active public role as a performance museum, regularly hosting puppet shows, such as forty-minute performances of medieval chivalric stories featuring characters like Orlando and Angelica, accompanied by live music. It also organizes the annual Morgana Festival, which integrates theatrical programs with exhibitions, conferences, and educational workshops. In 2018, the founding association promoted the Italian network of organizations for the protection, promotion, and enhancement of the Opera dei Pupi, recognized by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism. The association acts as the reference subject for this network, which unites thirteen Sicilian puppet companies and various cultural and research bodies, and is responsible for drafting the Plan of Measures for the Safeguarding of the Sicilian Opera dei Pupi.