Palenque

Called Italy's first major museum of modern art, the Maxxi recently opened its doors. And to be sure the intrusion of anything modern in ancient Rome will cause controversy - mainly here it seems because of the avant-garde architecture of the ultra-modern museum building itself - one critic said it looked more like a gas station than a museum.

Anyway another major museum in Rome for art lovers - and it is not in right in the historic center buton the northern part of central Rome - towards the 1960 Olympic Stadium coimplex it seems.

Anyway waiting for anyone with a first-hand look?


www.fondazionemaxxi.it

Iowa_Redhead

It sounds like a museum for women's hygiene products through the years.

caroline_edinburgh

Hi PalQ. Since I heard about this I've been thinking it sounds like a good reason to revisit Rome and we are now hoping to go next year.

Last week it won the Stirling Prize, the UK's most prestigious architecture award (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesi...stirling-prize) and there was quite a bit of footage of the building as part of the TV programme on the prize. It looks spectacular.

Very pleased for Zaha Hadid too - she's been shortlisted for the prize several times but never won before, and it was many years before anything by her was built in the UK. She designed the Cardiff Bay Opera House which won the design competition but was never built. I see she was also the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize which I assume is an American prize ?

flanneruk

What's it for?

Not, it claims, for the passe business of showing works of art, but:

"soprattutto, un laboratorio di sperimentazione e innovazione culturale, di studio, ricerca e produzione di contenuti estetici del nostro tempo."

No longer art, but "producing aesthetic content"?

That there Emperor's going to get bloody cold if he doesn't get some clothes on quick.

scrb11

You don't think of Rome the way you think of Paris or NY when you think of modernism or contemporary art.

Yet certainly there are significant Italian figures like Modigliani, Chirico and others.

And renowned architects and designers in more recent history.

Not sure if this museum has that kind of collection or will be showing works of that stature.

But is there no room for something modern in the "eternal city?"

At Slowtrav, there was once a thread about whether Rome was as "cosmopolitan" as some other European capitals.