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

Art in America, June, 2003 by Shara Wasserman

A show of MAXXI's permanent collection will occupy the galleries until the museum closes for further construction in July. Colombo plans to develop the institution's holdings hand in hand with the exhibition program. Thanks to purchases and donations, the collection currently includes works by Alys, Akakce, Avery, Nikos Baikas, Caccavale, William Kentridge, Khebrehzadeh, Marisaldi, Pessoli, Cristiano Pintaldi, Raedecker, Sara Rossi, Spadoni, Thomas Schutte, Patrick Tuttofuocco and Kara Walker (who is scheduled to exhibit with Margherita Manzelli in the first show of the season next fall). Works from the debut edition of the Young Italian Art Prize were acquired for the museum by the Italian State. Additional strategic purchases of late 20th-century art (Giovanni Anselmo, Piero Manzoni. Mario Merz, Gino De Domenicis) are intended to demonstrate the historical connections between older and newer generations. Moreover, Colombo hopes to develop an accord between MAXXI and its sister institution, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, passing on works as they exceed the definition of "contemporary" and receiving works on loan.

The collection of MAXXI's architecture museum is growing as well, under the supervision of Margherita Guccione. The archives of Enrico Del Debbio, Aldo Rossi and Carlo Scarpa--including drawings, models, photographs, books and design objects--have been acquired. A project called "Atlante italiano 003" (Italian Atlas 003), launched by DARC with the architecture school of the University of Pescara and the Milan Triennale, has netted 500 photographs as the nucleus of the architecture museum's photo department. Photographers were invited to document the physical condition and transformation of the country, an undertaking which will be repeated periodically over time. The first round is the subject of an exhibition that opened at MAXXI on May 29 and will run through July.

Danilo Eccher (formerly artistic director of the Galleria Civica d'Arte Contemporanea di Trento and director of the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Bologna) was appointed MACRO's director in December 2001, and the museum debuted 10 months later with five shows. Tony Oursler headlined with his first large-scale exhibition in Italy. Among some 60 works from the 1990s to the present, assembled by guest curator Elizabeth Janus, were blinking eyes, poison candy, psychotic rag figures and discarded furnishings. They led the visitor to Oursler's "Ground Zero" project, a never-before-exhibited suite of photographs which offered the near-voyeuristic experience of looking at spectators watching the collapse of the Twin Towers. Voyeurism was again intimated by the Japanese photographer Shizuka Yokomizo in her recent series "Strangers." A letter posted at the entrance to the gallery explained that the artist had photographed an undisclosed number of cooperating strangers in different major cities around the world, on a specified date, at sunset, as each subject stood 1 1/2 meters from the window, immobile, for 10 minutes, looking toward the camera lens.