MU.SP.A.C. - Museo Sperimentale d'Arte Contemporanea

Founded in 1993 after decades of art experimentation in Abruzzo, MU.SP.A.C. preserves a permanent collection from Joseph Beuys to contemporary Abruzzese artists. It combines a museum and archive in a Greek-cross pavilion.

Why it matters

Most contemporary museums grow downwards from a state institution; this one grew sideways from an association. The cultural association Centro Multimediale "Quarto di Santa Giusta", founded by Enrico Sconci, has worked continuously since 1984, taking its bearings from the twentieth-century avant-gardes and the neo-avant-gardes of the 1960s and 1970s — an early programme even gathered Italy's leading demo-ethno-anthropological researchers. In 1985, with the help of Lucrezia De Domizio and Buby Durini, the association staged a major exhibition around Joseph Beuys, whose social sculpture ideas run through everything that followed. The museum itself was founded in 1993 on the loan of works from Sconci's private collection plus gifts from artist friends and former students of the Academy in L'Aquila, and its permanent collection now holds Beuys, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Giulio Paolini and Fabio Mauri beside younger artists, many with Abruzzese roots.

What to notice

Rather than a sequence of masterpieces, the collection forms a network of relationships. Works created for the 2000 Annuale d'arte in the Cinquecento castle included Joseph Kosuth's "Vita et miracula", Fabio Mauri's "Una storia moderna" and Luca Patella's "Vas Caelestinus V"; these were donated to the permanent collection. The collection also includes works by Christo, Victor Vasarely, Mario Schifano, Ettore Spalletti, Aldo Rossi, Sylvano Bussotti and Carmelo Bene, alongside a "Sarajevo Collection for L'Aquila". The post-earthquake pavilion is laid out on a Greek-cross plan, which the museum interprets as a reference to the ornamental motif on the facade of Santa Maria di Collemaggio and to Beuys's theories.

Context and history

The museum has occupied several locations. From 1995 a convention with the Municipality gave the association the former monastery of Santa Maria dei Raccomandati, a fourteenth-century complex that had housed the city's civic museum until 1942 and then the Academy of Fine Arts; there the museum staged anthologies of Sylvano Bussotti, a documentary exhibition with Carmelo Bene, and projects with Enrico Castellani. Works of restructuring pushed the collection into Palazzo Baroncelli Cappa in 1998, and a 2000 exhibition for the Perdonanza Celestiniana returned it temporarily to the castle. The earthquake of 6 April 2009 made the museum's rooms unusable and damaged works in the permanent collection. A new seat at Piazza d'Arti was inaugurated on 6 November 2011 with the exhibition "Le scosse dell'Arte", which included further artist donations to the collection.