The MART (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto) is celebrating its tenth birthday with an exhibition which takes a fresh look at the relationship between its collections and the public, reflects on the gallery's assets and considers them in a new light.
“The Magnificent Obsession” exhibition has opened its doors. It’s a blend of the old and the new: early and contemporary works are exhibited in the same room, paintings by unknown artists and famous masterpieces are displayed side by side, and precious documents from the archives have stepped across their natural threshold and are displayed as works in their own right next to the range of exhibits which span the whole of the 20th century. The almost 3,000 works on display in the 34 rooms of the gallery will enable visitors to admire works by many artists: paintings, drawings, etchings, sculpture, films and videos, installations, tapestries, ceramic and enamel creations, posters, photographs, documents of various kinds, mail art, books about the works of individual artists, architectural models, magazines, and multiple arts. This way of conceiving the collection, and the way it has been mounted, the fact that the artists themselves have been involved in the fabric of the exhibition, and the joint efforts of the curators are the metaphor of the exhibition itself. The maniacal dimension of the obsession with the act of collecting is quite obvious but, at the same time, also prepares visitors for unusual sights. In other words, the MART acts not only as a tool for conserving its artistic heritage but also, and more particularly, as a workshop of ideas, an industrious melting-pot for promoting, producing, researching and forming cultural values.
The book/catalog begins with an extensive section of contributions from curators, artists and commentators before the actual catalog, illustrated with photographs taken especially for the publication by Ferdinando Guerra.