Marseille’s Museum of Up to date Artwork (MAC) reopens with a pop

Marseille’s Museum of Up to date Artwork (MAC) has simply acquired a facelift. Within the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the establishment – positioned within the prosperous southern neighbourhood of Bonneveine – underwent a four-year refurbishment. In consequence, it now boasts a brand-new reception corridor, a rooftop terrace and a brand new exhibition area. 

The reinvented museum – whose new inventive director Stéphanie Airaud is because of stem on this summer season – opened with a bang final evening with a short lived exhibition by Italian artist Paola Pivi and a rehang of its spectacular assortment that includes works by Louise Bourgeois, Zineb Sedira and Niki de Saint Phalle. However the celebration was tainted by ongoing social turmoil linked to President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform.

Designed within the late Nineteen Seventies by the German doctor Gustav Rau with views to accommodate his non-public assortment, MAC’s constructing was subsequently donated to the Metropolis of Marseille which opened its doorways to the general public in 1994 earlier than acquiring museum standing in 2003. Its modernist constructing is characterised by an imposing saw-tooth roof which graces its 2,500 sqm of marble-floored exhibition area with ample daylight. 

Now, due to a €5 million refurbishing mission spearheaded by native structure agency Bureau Structure Méditerranée (BAM), the museum boasts an uncluttered entrance corridor open to the road and over 300 sq m of further exhibition area devoted to experimental tasks. Exterior, a ramp now additionally hyperlinks the doorway courtyard to the Bonneveine backyard on the rear of the constructing and to a brand-new rooftop terrace with an aluminium bar and panoramic views of the encompassing eight arrondissements.

Inside, a newly-conceived grasp offers an summary of the museum’s spectacular assortment which options some 600 works spanning twentieth-century actions corresponding to Artwork Povera, Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus and Helps-Surfaces. Impressed by Italian critic and artist Germano Celant’s seminal essay ‘1968: In the direction of a World variety’, the brand new show titled ‘PARADE’ options 130 works divided into six sections exploring such themes as materiality, subjectivity and fiction. 

Some masterpieces would definitely earn the envy of different museums. Amongst them, Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco’s iconic 1993 sculpture La DS – a modified Citroën DS conceived to suit just one physique; Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1985 portray The King of Zulus – an homage to Louis Armstrong fabricated from acrylic, oil pastels and glued photocopies on canvas, bought by MAC in 1986 for the modest sum of 30,000 French francs (roughly 8,500 € at the moment); and French artist Annette Messager’s 1984 Couteau Baiser – an enlarged {photograph} of a passionate kiss retouched with shiny monochromatic acrylic colors and mounted on canvas. 

Alongside this, a short lived exhibition by Paola Pivi titled ‘It’s not my job, it’s your job’ options her ever-so Instagrammable multi-coloured feathered bears, amongst different large-size interactive works. 

For Marseille – France’s third largest metropolis traditionally burdened by excessive charges of criminality and unemployment – MAC’s reopening is a logo of its recently-elected socialist mayor Benoît Payan’s culturally-progressive worldwide imaginative and prescient, one which contrasts along with his centre-right clientelist predecessor of 25 years Jean-Claude Gaudin. However on the night of the launch, town’s enthusiasm was overshadowed by the stark actuality of nationwide social turmoil over pension reforms when a bunch of some 40 protestors stormed the rostrum chanting ‘Macron démission!’ (‘Macron resign!’) and brandishing banners studying ‘No to the privatisation of the artwork world!’ The intervention served as a harsh reminder {that a} revitalised museum alone can’t save Marseille from its advanced city ills. 

Paola Pivi, ‘It’s not my job, it’s your job’, 6 August 2023, MAC, Musée d’artwork contemporain, 69, avenue d’Haïfa, 13008 Marseille. macm.org (opens in new tab)