Roma renovatio: with a burst of museum construction, gallery inaugurations and government initiatives, the Eternal City makes its bid to become—once again—Italy's principal hub for contemporary art - Report From Italy

In recent years, Rome has enjoyed a remarkable renewal in the realm of contemporary art. Local and foreign dealers have opened new galleries, and established dealers have resumed or updated their exhibition programs. The city's collectors are growing in number, and foreign collectors are buying contemporary works in Rome. The international academies, well known for their scholarly activities, are freshly committed to contemporary programming in the visual arts.

The situation has not been this promising since the 1970s and '80s, the heyday of Arte Povera and the Transavanguardia. Even in the best of times, Rome has spent more money on the restoration of historical monuments than on contemporary expression. Political scandals routinely interrupt or halt progressive institutional support of new art, and left- and right-wing rivalries have taken a high toll on the formation of policy for nurturing contemporary culture. But perhaps the situation is changing, and most spectacularly with the inauguration in 2002 of two new museums devoted to contemporary art: the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo and the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma.

The Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI) is governed by the Direzione Generale per l'Architettura e l'Arte Contemporanee (DARC), an agency instituted by the ministry of culture in 2001 to promote contemporary Italian art and architecture (that is to say, of the last 50 years). The museum is located in the former Montello military barracks on Via Guido Reni, about a mile from the Piazza del Popolo and two blocks off the Via Flaminia, a main artery of the city. It appears isolated in the immediate residential area; however, Via Guido Reni forms part of an axis along which are located buildings that represent a veritable survey of Italian postwar architecture, including Renzo Piano's recently inaugurated Auditorium-Parco della Musica and three sports facilities from the 1950s, among them Pier Luigi Nervi's Palazzetto dello Sport and his Stadio Flaminio. Not far away is Paolo Portoghesi's mosque and Islamic Cultural Center, constructed during the late 1980s and inaugurated in 1995. Next to MAXXI is the site of the future headquarters of the Italian Space Agency, to be designed by Massimiliano Fuksas.

The Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma (MACRO) is a municipal endeavor administered by the city of Rome. The museum is located in a former Peroni beer factory on the Via Reggio Emilia in an elegant district just outside the Porta Pia in space which had initially been redeveloped as an expansion of the Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea [see "Front Page," Feb. '97]. A major reconstruction project by the French architect Odile Decq has been approved to convert the space into 21,500 square feet of galleries, spanning two floors, along with underground parking, roof garden, restaurant, library and media center. As with MAXXI, completion of MACRO is projected for late 2005. Even with allowances for the inevitable delays, Rome will have a pair of flagship institutions for contemporary art before long.

The London-based architect Zaha Hadid won the 1998 competition for remodeling the MAXXI complex, which eventually will include a 21stcentury museum and a national museum of architecture. Pending the comprehensive transformation of the facility, an interim restoration by the Roman architectural firm of Francesco Garofalo and Sharon Yoshye Miura has allowed for a limited exhibition and acquisition program. In December 2000, the ministry of culture and the nascent museum (which was then called the Centro Nazionale per le Arti Contemporanee) launched the "Young Italian Art Prize" with a show of 14 artists titled "Migrazioni e Multiculturalita" (Migrations and Multiculturalism) and curated by Paolo Colombo, MAXXI's curator of art, with Laura Cherubini and Anna Mattirolo. The jury prize (awarded by an international team of art critics) went to 26-year-old Stefania Galegati; the public prize (determined by responses to a visitor questionnaire) was awarded to Bruna Esposito. The second edition of the Young Italian Art Prize will be presented in the Venice Pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennale while MAXXI closes briefly for the refurbishment of additional space for temporary exhibitions. Artists in the current round are Sara Rossi, Carola Spadoni, Avish Khebrehzadeh and Charles Avery.

Appointed in August 2001, Colombo is responsible for a five-year plan that focuses on forming a permanent collection, organizing temporary exhibitions and generating public interest in the new institution. The Italian-born Colombo, who has spent much of his professional career abroad (as gallery director at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, director of the Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva, curator of the VI Biennial of Istanbul in 1999, curator of the Italian participation at the 2002 Sao Paulo Bienal), realistically acknowledges that progress will be gradual and that the museum must be made welcoming.