The first ten years behind you, the next ten years ahead: how is Maxxi, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts, changing? We asked Giovanna Melandri, president of the MAXXI Foundation, who took it over in 2012 and launched it starting almost from scratch. Today Maxxi has stadium numbers, with admissions and tickets sold higher than the pre-pandemic period. “The mandatory green pass and visitor protection rules helped us. The public feels safe,” explains Melandri. And the future "is a construction site, that of a museum that elaborates, experiments and innovates". There are many new arrivals: after the success of Salgado, new exhibitions are on the launch pad, but there is also an agreement with Fremantle and the video series (starting with five episodes) which will make artists such as Battaglia, Piovani and Pistoletto. And then the energy upgrade of the complex designed by Zaha Hadid and the drive towards decarbonisation, the first among Italian museums. And the Digital Innovation Hub project in a currently unused area and more. Here, in the words of Giovanna Melandri, is the MAXXI of the future.
MAXXI has celebrated its first ten years and MAXXI L'AQUILA, in the meantime, has become a reality.
“Our first tenth anniversary, even if it hadn't fallen in full pandemic, it still wouldn't have been a merely celebratory occasion. We are a museum-laboratory, a pulsating organism, where the inspiration of artists, architects, masters of photography, an attentive and curious public, educators, trainers, intellectuals and professionals interested in comparing ideas, dialogue between different disciplines and expressive languages. The exact opposite of a cold exhibition space. When you take off your MAXXI admission ticket, you embark on a journey, a journey into the beauty of spaces and works, into the circulation of critical thought that draws from artistic creativity to explore the great enigmas of the human condition and our societies. The shock of the pandemic, doesn't it seem like a paradox, has multiplied and enriched this vocation, this identikit of MAXXI as a pole of knowledge and research.
The new headquarters finally opened in L'Aquila, a city so emblematic in recent Italian history and so full of culture and history, represents a milestone we are proud of: because it puts MAXXI in line with some of the major international museums of contemporary arts and above all because it sends a strong signal of recovery, of rebirth, of trust I would say, for that community badly injured by the earthquake and for the entire national community grappling with the mourning and sacrifices brought by the coronavirus and today engaged in the great reconstruction game . In particular, the results of the first six months of activity are encouraging: il MAXXI THE EAGLE recorded over 18 thousand visitors and over two thousand spectators at the performances and events that took place. It is an investment, a project from which, I am sure, many fruits will come because at the basis of everything there is the synergy with the institutions and the excellence of the territory: from the Municipality to the Gran Sasso Science Institute, from the Munda (National Museum of Abruzzo) at the Academy of Fine Arts, at the University”.
Looking to the next ten years, what are the main innovations to come?
“In these first 10 years, as I said, the Museum has transformed, it has become a device for research, training, experimentation, innovation. With MAXXI L'Aquila, we have demonstrated our ability to design. Now, we would like to create a new space in an adjacent area still pertaining to the museum in which to grow the MAXXI of the future.
The 3 keywords are sustainability, innovation and inclusion. We would like to create a research, experimentation and training center in which the most qualified skills in the world of creativity work together with the scientific community. We also plan to allocate a large space to public green. With the Architecture Department, directed by Margherita Guccione, we are working on a large urban regeneration project, which we will present in February, in which artistic research, science and technology, sustainability dialogue together".
More immediately: the next exhibitions?
"I begin by saying that the museum is experiencing a moment of great vitality: the number of visitors today exceeds the record of the first months after opening (in October and November there was a monthly average of 35 admissions and 45 tickets sold) . The entry into force of the mandatory green pass to access museums last August and all the precautionary rules (temperature measurement, masks, distancing, etc.) have helped: the public feels safer and comes to MAXXI with enthusiasm. While before Covid 50% of visitors were international, now 78% come from Italy and Rome, and we have greatly strengthened our relationship with the city.
“Right now, the cultural offer is really rich and diversified: the public can immerse themselves in the Amazon forest and its pristine beauty with the photographic exhibition Amazon di Sebastian Salty, can reflect on controversial issues such as censorship, image control and information on the web with The Purple Line di Thomas Hirschhorn, can get lost among the masterpieces of the great masters at the turn of the millennium borderless. You can even leave the museum and go and visit Giacomo Balla's extraordinary futurist house, opened to the public for the first time last June thanks to the commitment of MAXXI and the Special Superintendency of Rome for Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape and which, request, it will be open for visits throughout 2022.
“In mid-December, we will inaugurate two important exhibitions: Cao Fei. Supernova, the first solo exhibition in Italy dedicated to one of the most interesting Chinese artists on the international scene who works with virtual reality, e Good news. Women in Architecture which tells through a series of case histories the overcoming of the stereotype of the male architect at the head of the studio and the evolution of the profession into a female one”.
Digital and multimedia are increasingly present in contemporary art. The agreement with the Fremantle production company, anticipated in recent days, confirms the desire to present MAXXI as an open museum, a window on art and its protagonists within everyone's reach. Can you tell us how it was born and how it will be articulated?
“The unprecedented agreement with Fremantle is certainly a result of great strategic and symbolic value. But the launch of a joint quality project between our national museum of XNUMXst century arts and the world's leading production company for entertainment programmes, television series and arthouse films (such as The brilliant friend o It was the hand of God, to mention just two titles) is not just a flagship to boast about. It is the sign of credibility, authority and magnetism that MAXXI has been able to build, brick by brick, learning from successes as well as disappointments, as a center where contemporary arts are truly accessible, where young people meet talent and skills they express in a circular way.
“In the gloomy periods of lockdown, MAXXI has focused like no other cultural institution on digital, becoming a small broadcaster: with over two hundred videos, specially created to bring our collection and exhibitions into homes, it has garnered a good fifteen million views. Fremantle's arrival in the MAXXI spaces is therefore a stage, and what a stage, in a long journey. Filming of the first five episodes is underway with as many masters of special caliber, which will be usable from next spring: the award-winning photographer Letizia Battaglia, the pioneer of sustainable architecture Mario Cucinella, the multifaceted architect and designer Piero Lissoni, the Oscar-winning composer Nicola Piovani and the master of Arte Povera Michelangelo Pistoletto. They will reveal the secrets of the "craft" and the creative process of their works. It will be an intimate and, at the same time, educational story: their origins, beginnings, meetings, study, work, success. Fremantle arrives in the square and in the galleries designed by the late Zaha Hadid to underline even more that the "real" MAXXI and the "virtual" MAXXI are two declinations of the same ambitious artistic and cultural project".
Another big issue is that of climate. Sebastiao Salgado's exhibition was a great success, to which a number of events and presentations at Maxxi were linked, the last one with Minister Cingolani. What can MAXXI do on the subject of climate change and the protection of green areas in a city like Rome afflicted, like so many metropolises, by environmental problems?
The attractive power released as always by Sebastião Salgado in Amazon goes beyond the beauty of its images and the spectacular setting, including sound, which capture and envelop the visitor. Salgado, who has been our guest and interlocutor several times in recent times, does not limit himself to masterfully describing a world to be protected and saved, he shows us a path, the path of individual responsibility and the sharing of different development models. As far as we are concerned, we are working on an energy upgrade for the museum, a museum that is still "adolescent" but christened before the choice of decarbonization: our goal is to become Net Zero. As mentioned, we plan to create a public green area in a large space adjacent to the museum structure: it will also contain urban gardens and will call on artists, landscape architects and agronomists to contribute. We have said it from the outset, and we continue to think it: MAXXI is a "building site", a museum that continuously develops, experiments and innovates its environments and horizons.
MAXXI and Rome. The Romans have reappropriated the MAXXI. And the institutions? Can the changing of the guard in the Capitol favor a common planning?
“It's true, the numbers of admissions to the museum prove it: the Romans are "discovering" MAXXI and we are satisfied and confident that our fellow citizens have begun or have begun to visit MAXXI again, its exhibitions, its spaces, its cultural "billboard". It is a trend that we also see in events and in educational and training activities”.
“The Romans have noticed MAXXI, and I am confident that the new Capitoline administration will also notice. Now we can move on, I am convinced of it. With Gualtieri and his team, we would like to finally achieve a project for the recovery and reuse of the former barracks in via Guido Reni, our neighbors. Those spaces, in the part to be allocated to public purposes, in my opinion could find the best accommodation as an innovation workshop thanks to the creation of residences for artists, scientists, computer engineers, environmental experts. It would be a project to which MAXXI is ready to contribute with enthusiasm. Our young people, our artists, our scholars look to these challenges”.
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