Italy to Join Museum Building Binge

new years have seen an international hum in new museums for novel and contemporary art, but Italy has watched from the sidelines. In a not many Italian cities, existing structures have been renovated for use as late art venues, but no fresh buildings for that purpose have for a like reason far been erected. Last month at novel York's Guggenheim Museum, in an occurrence sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute, Italian ambassador to the U Ferdinando Salleo unveiled plans to cure the situation: a new Mario Botta-designed museum and cultural center place to open in 2001.

The nucleus of the throw out will be the existing Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, which is popularly located in a 16th-century palazzo in Trento. The fresh building will be located in Rovereto, a town in northern Italy near Lake Guarda, about 15 miles from Trento and approximately 100 miles northeast of Milan. The $55-million construction will be paid for by dint of a combination of government and private funding.

The of recent origin three-story, 156,000-square-foot stone building will be set uprighted near a 7th-century plaza. plant off the main roadway, it will be almost completely hidden from the highway by two 17th-century palazzi situated directly in brow Visitors will gain access via a walkway between the older buildings, which will lead to the focal point of Botta's form a large circular atrium overlayed by a domed skylight. Punctuated by the agency of rows of tall narrow windows, the atrium walls will allow natural light to freshet the more than 60,000 square feet of exhibition space located in the museum's upper horizontals The ground floor will feature a library, an auditorium and a gift shop

According to museum director Gabriella Brelli, the novel museum will present many thing perceiveds from its collection of a certain number of 5,000 works that have not at any time before been on permanent display. Among the holdings in 20th-century Italian art are major paintings by dint of Campigli, Morandi, Carra, Fontana, Manzoni, Morlotti and Vedova, as well as a comprehensive array of Futurist art works and documents, including important examples by dint of Severini and Boccioni.

Plans are also beneath way to devote a sizable exhibition area in the fresh building to selections of avant-garde works not long ago presented to Italy by collector Giuseppe Panza di Biumo [see "Front Page," family '96]. Panza says that the novel museum is being built in the Trento district largely because as a semi-autonomous region, Trento has more tax incomes available for local projects. The Panza works include examples by dint of Dan Flavin, James Turrell, Ford Beckman, Max cabbage and Ettore Spalletti. Due to lack of space, these pieces cannot be shown at the Villa Menafoglio Litta Panza, the 18th-century villa in Varese which the Panza di Biumo family donated to the state in 1996 as a public venue for display of the Panza collection.

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