MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome
- carlottaceccarini9
- Sep 5, 2022
- 3 min read
The revival of contemporary art in Rome embodied by the museum MACRO, inaugurated in 2002, presents a collection of about 600 works, The most significant artistic expressions since the second half of the twentieth century and has distinguished itself in the artistic scene for the numerous and innovative temporary exhibitions.
The museum of the city of Rome dedicated to contemporary art was born from the desire to give a worthy place to the works of art collected by the City of Rome. The collection began with the gift of Bernini and his bust of a lady in the capital. This collection of works was enlarged over the years, being moved from one location to another and partly dispersed. Only in the 80s after difficult travels, was reunited and the City found a worthy seat there. The area of the former Peroni Beer factory, whose brand is still visible on a facade of the museum, It was sold to the city of Rome and the French archistar Odile Decq designed what is now known as MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome.
Modern and innovative architecture, in dialogue with the city and the context. Red, black and white geometric shapes relate to iron, concrete and glass mirrors, the structural materials of the building. An internal labyrinth composed of flexible environments, which winds through a series of exhibition routes, which extend for about 13000 square meters, meeting suspended corridors of glass, terraces and balconies that create perspectives and viewpoints always different. The central focus of the MACRO is the large red volume, the auditorium, located in the centre of the foyer, where there are exhibition and teaching rooms, the bookshop and a reading room. The large parallelepiped is illuminated by a skylight that brings natural light into the lobby space. To complete the coverage of the museum, around the skylight, there is a walkable roof, crowned by the bar-museum, the Macro 138. The Decq project follows a precise colour scheme: black and grey for the lobby and the suspended pathways, white for the exhibition halls and red for the auditorium and the café. The museum is accessed through a path that develops in the middle of a Zen garden.
The architectural and exhibition design of the museum makes it a space in which to exercise the imagination. A space that consecrates a new idea of museum. The exhibition project, divided into 3 years, involves the active participation of the public and the realization of a dense program of temporary exhibitions, eight about the year, which are placed as pieces of a puzzle within the MACRO. The museum itself and its function are called into question: experiences are created that envelop the viewer in 360 degrees. A dynamic experience that brings art into dialogue in all its manifestations offering a wide panorama, not only on Italian contemporary art, but also international, the result of numerous collaborations with foreign countries.
The frame around the temporary exhibitions is the permanent collection that boasts among its names: Carla Accardi, Piero Dorazio, Pino Pascali, Tano Festa, Mario Schifano, Mimmo Rotella, Enzo Cucchi, Pietro Consagra, De Maria, Claire Fontaine, Boetti, Isgró.
The comparison with the rival of MACRO is inevitable: the other icon of contemporary art in Rome, the MAXXI by Zaha Hadid. Apparently united under various aspects, in fact, both architects are women, the opening date is almost coincident and both museums are in close relationship with the pre-existences of the place where they were built. The analogies, in reality, end here: the MAXXI is characterized by a centrifugal force, an energy that is released outwards, an architecture that permeates with the surrounding, but from which it stands out clearly; MACRO, on the contrary, focuses on a centripetal force, Introflex develops as a monolith embraced by the context that surrounds it, from which it differs strongly and with which, at the same time, thanks to the glazed surface, it manages to blend in.
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