MAXXI Contemporary Art Center

The MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts, instituted by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, is Italy's first national public museum dedicated to contemporary creativity.
The definitive home of the museum, designed by Zaha Hadid (winner of the 1999 international design competition) is currently nearing completion in Rome's Flaminio neighbourhood, on the site of the former Montello Barracks. Since 2003 an experimental and innovative construction site has been working to complete this new, ultramodern museum.
The complex is home to two distinct institutions: MAXXI Art (directed by Anna Mattirolo) and MAXXI Architecture (directed by Margherita Guccione), focused on promoting the arts and architecture through the collection, conservation, study and dissemination of the most current movements. To date, the MAXXI Art collection contains over 300 works by such artists as Boetti, Clemente, Kapoor, Kentridge, Merz, Penone, Pintaldi, Richter, Warhol and others of equal fame. The MAXXI Architecture collection features the personal archives of Carlo Scarpa, Aldo Rossi, Pierluigi Nervi and others, as well as projects by contemporary architects such as Toyo Ito, Italo Rota and Giancarlo De Carlo, together with the photographic collections of the Atlante italiano and Cantiere d'autoreprojects. Designed as a campus of arts and culture, the multi-disciplinary and multi-functional MAXXI is also a new urban space open to the entire city. The MAXXI's 27,000 m2 contain - in addition to the two museums - an auditorium, a library and media library, a bookshop, a cafeteria, temporary exhibition spaces, various open spaces for live events, commercial activities, workshops and spaces of study and recreation.

Published 23.03.2010