Making a Museum: National Heritage, Urban Politics and the Museo Nazionale Romano, 1981-2000

This dissertation argues that understanding the transformation of the Museo Nazionale Romano between 1981 and 2000 requires examining the structures and processes of Italian state bureaucracy that enabled, constrained, and ultimately shaped the museum's evolution. When Italy's principal repository of ancient Roman art evolved from a single site into a network of four distinct venues, the museo diffuso model represented both institutional innovation and administrative compromise, revealing how museums operate within and are shaped by the governance systems that enable them. The study begins with the Special Law for Roman Antiquities (Legge 92/81), which authorized exceptional funding for expropriating and restoring key buildings. Drawing on archival materials from the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma, ministerial correspondence, and press coverage, the dissertation reconstructs the bureaucratic obstacles and political pressures that shaped the museum's development over two decades. The transformation was neither smooth nor inevitable. Palazzo Massimo took nearly two decades to complete due to expropriation disputes and funding delays. Palazzo Altemps reframed the museum's interpretive approach by foregrounding collecting histories. The Terme di Diocleziano was reconfigured for epigraphy and protohistory, while Crypta Balbi presented urban archaeology as an ongoing process. Together, these four sites distributed collections and interpretive authority across Rome. This institutional evolution unfolded during turbulent years in Italian political life. Legislative reforms in the 1990s promised greater autonomy, yet the MNR remained embedded within hierarchical structures, with decision-making concentrated at ministerial level and funding dependent on exceptional allocations. The dissertation treats administrative documents as primary evidence of how museum visions become institutional reality, demonstrating that bureaucratic practice is not an obstacle to museum development but constitutive of it.