MAAM-MAXXI

When Walter Veltroni created the MAXXI, he watned to create the Roamn ewuivalent of the Beaugourg. The operation failed, not only because, after having spent billions to build the building,. They had no more money to buy the art to put into the container, but mainly because museum of modern art are daramatically different from museum of classic art. Museum of classic art are collections, with the objective of displaying the history of art, of simply for the amusement of the visitors. A museum of contemporary art is mainly a place wher the artistic world meets – artists but also critics, collectionists, the public.And nobody meets in the MAXXI, apart from families with little children.

The failure of the MAXXI was the first idea that catched my mind when I visited the MAAM, a strange museum in a squat in an abandonend factory in the suburbs of Rome. Here there are 400 pieces of art – and here the artistic world of Rome meet, and the context is not designed by an archistar but is new and fascinating like the Beaubourg when it was build in the 80’s.

But why MAAM succeded where MAXXI failed? The problem is that only the king can found big institution of art – like the Uffizi, the Louvre and the Beaubourg. In Rome, the last king was Tarquinius the Superb (apart from Totti), and the power passed to the Senate and the People of Rome (Senatus populusque romanus). The Senate is the church, and the people is .. the people. And the people of Rome is the people of the suburbs, the people that occupied the abandoned factory and that has the power to commit artists to embellish his dwelling.

The people of the MAAM like to compare their effort to the artistis of Mediaeval cathedral. They say so because they reject the artist as god that arose in the XVIth century and became so annoying in the XXth, but the art of the cathedrals was for the glory of god. When I walk the rooms of the MAAM I feel more like in the Vatican Stanzas, and it is no case that one of the paintings is named “La Cappella Porcina” (The Swines’ Chapel). Michelangelo Pistoletto, in a video, thinks to something like the “Soziale Plastik” (this is not suprising, he deruives from Beuys), but here again I think there is a misunderstanding: here the squatters are not like Beuys, they are more like Peggy Guggenheim (the home of Peggy Guggenheim in Venice reminds strongly the MAAM).

It is perhaps surprising that such an enterprise occurs in a period where market and money are the only legitimate power and political power is scowled at; but perhaps not.