Twentieth century personal archives

“Twentieth century personal archives” is a research project on the personal contemporary archives in Veneto, realized from 2009 to 2017 by the Veneto Region, in partnership with Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche.

The aim of the research, realized in several stages, was the systematical survey of an archival reality increasingly widespread, in need of specific attentions and specific disciplinary cognitive approaches, both for the quantity and the nature of the materials included in the collections and for their relevance as source of study for contemporary history and culture.

The survey has started from the province of Treviso, the presentation of the first results was held during the meeting “Personal archives in the Trevigiano: through memories and identities to discover” (Treviso, 28th April 2010), it followed in the provinces of Belluno and Vicenza and it concluded in Padua, Rovigo, Venice and Verona.

The mapping restored an archival heritage highly articulated, consisting of thousands of property funds both public and private. The contents and cultural contexts of the documents are very diversified and lend themselves to potential multiple discoveries and to several branches of research.

The archival data deriving from the survey are stored and updated on a regular basis in a data base available on request by the Region, while another part of the funds can be found in the SIAR Veneto, thus being accessible to public consultation.

The work file developed during the project (publications on people and funds, several documents pertaining to the enhancing of the statistically surveyed archives) is available by the archive of the Fondazione Benetton.

It is available online the dossier Personal Archive in Veneto. A project to discover, introduce and narrate the hidden lives of our maps, 2018 (file Pdf 1,5 MB), which includes and analyse the outcome of the research.