Following an agreement reached in 2006 with the Republic of Canton Ticino, the owner of the materials, MUSEC, is keeping on loan, for an indefinite period of time, the entire Collection of works and the Documentary Fund collected by engineer Alfredo Nodari and his daughter Emma.

The Nodari Collection is the result of research and collection activity that has its roots in the early 1950s. The first nucleus of the Collection is in fact formed by the works collected by Alfredo Nodari and his daughter Emma during that ‘Expedition Suisse en Afrique’ that took them from Europe to the heart of Congo in 1953-54, which was meticulously described by Emma Nodari in her book Under Africa’s sky. 25,000 km by Car. Already this group of works is characterised by a marked heterogeneity. It consists, in fact, of around 290 works mainly from the northern regions of today’s Democratic Republic of Congo. The ethnic groups most represented are the Nande from the Kivu region, the Kuba from Kasai, the Mangbetu from north-east Congo and the Mbuti from the Epuru-Ituri forest. From that first trip there were many more until the 1970s, greatly enriching the Collection, which today consists of more than 600 works of art and objects of material culture, two large riverboats, about 6,000 photographs, 71 documentary films and more than 60 hours of sound recordings on cassette or tape. A careful study of the Nodari Collection, conducted by the Museum’s researchers, resulted in the publication of the catalogue “The Nodari Collection. Catalogue of the works”  and in the temporary exhibition “The journey of Emma Nodari” held from 10 April to 27 June 2010 at the Castelgrande in Bellinzona.