Bologna, special initiatives and free openings for the 50th anniversary of GAM and the 40th anniversary of the Museo Civico Medievale

In 2025, the Bologna Civic Museums are celebrating two important anniversaries: on May 1, the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of the Bologna Gallery of Modern Art, forerunner of the MAMbo - Museum of Modern Art of Bologna, and on May 5, the 40th anniversary of the Medieval Civic Museum.

Special initiatives and special openings from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. with free admission to both permanent collections and temporary exhibitions are planned to celebrate: on Thursday, May 1, 2025 at MAMbo - Museum of Modern Art of Bologna and the Morandi Museum, and on Monday, May 5, 2025 at the Museo Civico Medievale. On the occasion of Labor Day, the remaining venues of the Bologna Civic Museums observe a day of closure on Thursday, May 1.

Schedule

Thursday, May 1, 2025

MAMbo - Museum of Modern Art of Bologna

The history of MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, opened on May 5, 2007 in the building of the former Forno del Pane, is closely linked to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, an institution that gave the origins to the current museum and on which rest the foundations of research, design and cultural debate still evolving today. On May 1, 1975, the museum spaces specially designed by artist and architect Leone Pancaldi (Bologna, 1915 - ivi 1995) were inaugurated in Piazza della Costituzione.

GAM was born in the climate of intellectual vivacity that pervaded the city in those years, after having seen preceded its official opening a decade of events, exhibitions and competitions carried out in auspice of its construction gathered under the title of Un Museo Oggi.

GAM’s 30-year activity has been based on a binary planning divided between the presentation of the cultural avant-garde and the reinterpretation of Italian and international art history: from the International Performance Week to the anthological exhibitions dedicated to the protagonists of the twentieth century, from the parallel and complementary activity of the Villa delle Rose venue to the constant monitoring of young Italian art represented by the Spazio Aperto experience.

Fifty years after the opening of the forerunner exhibition space of MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, this anniversary is celebrated with the exhibition Antonio Masotti. Birth of a Museum, curated by Uliana Zanetti and freely accessible in the museum’s Foyer until May 18, 2025.

The exhibition brings together a selection of original photographic prints by Antonio Masotti (Calderara di Reno, 1918 - Bologna, 2003), accompanied by a screen projection of all the images, acquired in digital format for this occasion.

The photographer documented the work of inventorying the collections and setting up the GAM’s inaugural exhibitions, Avant-Garde and Popular Culture, curated by Giovanni Maria Accame, and three of the scheduled solo shows dedicated respectively to Luciano Minguzzi (curated by Marco Valsecchi), Xanti Schawinsky (curated by Franco Solmi) and Luciano De Vita (curated by Andrea Emiliani). The photo shoot became the subject of a further exhibition, Birth of a Museum, included among those with which the Gallery of Modern Art was taking off.

The exhibition is included among the initiatives of the 24th annual Quante storie nella Storia. Week of didactics and heritage education in archives, promoted by Soprintendenza archivistica e bibliografica dell’Emilia Romagna, Regione Emilia-Romagna - Settore Patrimonio culturale and Associazione Nazionale Archivistica Italiana - Sezione Emilia Romagna, which will take place from May 5 to 11, 2025.

On the occasion of the celebrations related to the 50th anniversary of the birth of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, temporary exhibitions Facile ironia. Irony in Italian Art between the 20th and 21st Centuries, curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Caterina Molteni, with more than one hundred works and archival documents by more than seventy artists, aims to trace the history of Italian art between the 20th and 21st centuries through the theme of irony, and Valeria Magli. MORBID, curated by Caterina Molteni in the Project Room, which traces through archival documents, stage clothes, photographs and works of art the career of the dancer and choreographer known for investigating the language of the body and its movement by forging an innovative dialogue with poetic text.

The MAMbo Education Department also offers, from 3 to 6 p.m. Ridiamoci su!, a free-access workshop activity open to people of all ages that draws inspiration from Valentina Tanni’s The great wall of memes, a work part of the exhibition Facile ironia. Irony in Italian art between the 20th and 21st centuries. During the workshop each participant will be able to look at works from MAMbo’s permanent collection with irony and make them the protagonists of original memes.

Monday, May 5, 2025

Medieval Civic Museum

With the opening of the Museo Civico Medievale in the premises of the 15th-century Ghisilardi-Fava Palace (now Ghisilardi Palace) on May 5, 1985, the Civic Administration of Bologna fulfilled its commitment, already made several years ago, to reorganize Bologna’s museum heritage by carrying out the much-needed separation from the Museo Civico Archeologico of the vast sections devoted to medieval and Renaissance artistic culture.

The plan to move them to an autonomous location responded to a twofold need. The first was to free up the rooms in which the archaeological materials were stored to allow the museum to be organized according to more modern and functional criteria, and its development linked to the continuous contributions from excavations in the Bolognese territory; the second, to return the medieval and Renaissance collections to their original reality of works and documents that are worth not only as testimonies of art, but components of the civil fabric that constitutes the very fabric and face of the ancient culture of the city of Bologna. The museographic design intervention curated by architect Cesare Mari (PANSTUDIO associated architects) has ordered a visit itinerary divided into two parts, which today coincide respectively with the ground floor together with the basement and the second floor: on the one hand, highly relevant testimonies of the city’s life and culture, mainly dating back to the medieval period; on the other hand, objects from the modern age, of various kinds and origins, the result of the refined and eclectic Bolognese collecting. Although heterogeneous in terms of typology and geographical provenance, the two nuclei are integrated into a coherent whole, representative of the cultural and social history of the city of Bologna, maintaining that strong link with the territory that already informed the previous Museo Civico inaugurated in 1881 in Palazzo Galvani.

On the occasion of its 40th birthday, the Museo Civico Medievale is expanding its exhibition itinerary with a new section dedicated to Renaissance ceramics, set up in Room 24 on the second floor of Palazzo Ghisilardi. The selection of artifacts that is returned to permanent use allows visitors to trace the development of figured ceramics, that is, “historiated” with subjects taken from ancient mythology, sacred history and the repertoires of grotesque ornamentation.

The ceramic collection of the Museo Civico Medievale in Bologna is unanimously considered one of the most important in Italy in terms of consistency and quality; it is also considered important for the prestige of the provenances of its nearly three hundred pieces. Formed thanks to the confluence of historical collections, it was further increased thanks to donations and bequests from private individuals (Rusconi and Pepoli families), which arrived after the founding of the Civic Museum in 1881. Intended largely ab origine for illustrious collectors, some undisputed masterpieces in the museum can be traced back to the major centers of Italian production: Faenza, Casteldurante, and Urbino.

Within the collection, a separate chapter is reserved for Hispano-Moorish metal luster ceramics, made by master craftsmen from the Valencian area, who operated mainly in the major center of Manises, recovering techniques and ornamental styles derived from the ceramic production of the Islamic East. The selection of specimens on display can be dated between the second half of the 15th and 16th centuries and are decorated with stylized motifs mostly of plant or faunal inspiration, achieving effects of astonishing chromatic iridescence in the ruby red of gold, sometimes associated with blue.

Over the years, the holdings of the Museo Civico Medievale have been enriched thanks to important donations that, not only because of their magnitude but also because of the artistic quality of the pieces, have contributed to significantly increasing the already existing collections, sometimes filling gaps or perfectly complementing them. These events are relevant not only for tangibly testifying to the trust in Bologna’s Civic Museums as an elective place of excellence for guaranteeing to posterity the preservation, enhancement and public enjoyment of goods collected for private taste, but also for stimulating unexpected encounters and interweavings, harbingers of new interests and studies aimed at deepening research and enhancing the museum collections themselves.

The most recent case is that of the collection of oriental art that belonged to the English collector Norman Jones (1903-1985), which came to the City of Bologna in 2023 thanks to the generous act of donation willed by his daughter Ruth, a resident of the city for many years.

The eclectic collection nucleus donated consists of 146 objects and works that include textiles, sculptures, prints, drawings and watercolors, from the Far East and the African continent, some of them dating back to ancient Egypt, as well as books and photographs.

The first public opportunity for presentation and enhancement is the exhibition Perspectives of the Orient. The Norman Jones Donation to the Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna, curated by Mark Gregory D’Apuzzo, Giovanni Gamberi, Massimo Medica and Luca Villa, which displays a selection of 47 pieces, including Indo-Islamic Murshidaba miniatures, Hindu-inspired statues and objects, Japanese woodcuts, netsuke and objects of private use. Opened last Nov. 23 in the museum’s Lapidarium, the exhibition-promoted by the Civic Museums of Ancient Art in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Far Eastern Art (CSAEO) in Bologna-is open until Monday, May 5, 2025.

Pictured: Bologna Gallery of Modern Art, 1975. Photo by Antonio Masotti. Courtesy of Settore Musei Civici Bologna | MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Antonio Masotti Archives.

Bologna, special initiatives and free openings for the 50th anniversary of GAM and the 40th anniversary of the Museo Civico Medievale

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