MAMbo in Bologna celebrates its birthday by becoming (also) an incubator for artists

Happy Birthday MAMbo: it was May 5, 2007 when MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, now one of the most important contemporary art museums in Italy, began its activities. And on its thirteenth birthday, there is an important novelty, because the Bologna institution will no longer be just a museum with a rich collection of 20th-century and modern-day art, but will also be an incubator for artists.In fact, the Nuovo Forno del Pane (New Bread Oven) is born, a project resulting from the collaboration between theBologna Museums Institution, the Department of Culture and Promotion of the city and the related Department of the Municipality of Bologna, and Lorenzo Balbi, director of MAMbo, which includes a redefinition of the museum’s identity and strategy.

The building was built in 1915, thanks to the will of the then mayor of Bologna Francesco Zanardi, to house a municipal bakery with the aim of coping with the difficulties of supply during the First World War. The main objective was subsistence feeding, but also promotion of education and access to culture for the weaker sections of society. Since 2007, after architectural redevelopment based on a design by Aldo Rossi, the building has become home to the museum.

The spaces and function of the MAMbo’s Sala delle Ciminiere will thus be transformed into a space of production, of creative community where art becomes bread for the mind and the museum is transformed into an oven, a space that the city offers to its artists to restart after this global emergency.
As an answer to the crisis, MAMbo therefore proposes culture: the historic building, now the museum’s headquarters, opens as a laboratory of experimentation, a forge of new works, a place for planning.
With Nuovo Forno del Pane (New Bread Oven ), the Municipality of Bologna, Istituzione Bologna Musei and MAMbo mobilize to support categories affected by the pandemic: artists, photographers, designers, filmmakers and creatives will have a working space to create a creative community.

As a result, exhibition programming will be partially and temporarily interrupted to provide a workspace for local artists who need it to restart.

Istituzione Bologna Musei will launch an open call in May aimed at artists resident or domiciled in Bologna who currently lack a space/workshop. The number of artists will be commensurate with the indications on the organization of work spaces established by government and local authorities for the management of “Phase 2” of the health emergency. From the selection made by the internal staff of the museum, a ranking will be made for the allocation of space and an incentive to start the production of new works. These indications will also be referred to for the refurbishment of the spaces in the Ciminiere Hall and other areas of the museum, which will be divided into ateliers/workshops and may include, in addition to studios, facilities open to different subjects, such as a video recording/assembly room, a photo lab and darkroom, a small print shop, a carpentry workshop, a space for experimentation on new technologies of Augmented Reality Augmented, a radio station (a NEU Radio collaboration is being studied), a space for art publishing, a music room, a performance area, and one dedicated to self-education reading groups.

The logo created by Aldo Giannotti for the New Bread Oven.

This articulated project can be realized through institutional cooperation and networking among institutions in the area. A museum reconfiguration such as the one proposed by the Nuovo Forno del Pane will involve a reshaping of mediation activities: the traditional guardian/visitor dynamic will be overcome to propose a mediator/person relationship. In fact, training activities of qualified museum mediators who will interact with the public will be developed, thanks to projects already initiated by the City of Bologna and the intensification of partnerships with the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Bologna.

In the context of the production center and artists’ studios that will see the light of day in the museum, the activity of the Educational Department will be further enhanced, working on proposals based on “making” art, with the direct involvement of artists, professionals and practitioners in an approach not exclusively based on works, but also and above all on practices, process, relationship and the use of workshops and materials available.

In addition, in a second phase of the project, “senior” artists already equipped with studios in which to work will be able to submit projects for works to be made using the workshops of the New Bread Oven, intended to be acquired through public funds or or from private individuals sensitized to new forms of mechanization.

The artist Aldo Giannotti has developed a logo that visually represents the museum’s new production vocation, emphasizing the formal and architectural elements that most refer to its historical identity. As for the main channels of communication of Nuovo Forno del Pane, they will be not only the web and social media, but above all an intense relational activity through studio visits, dialogues, open studio days with artists, public returns of the produced works and completed projects, and a program of meetings, lectures and presentations in the permitted modes.

Pictured below is the MAMbo. Ph. Credit Matteo Monti.

MAMbo in Bologna celebrates its birthday by becoming (also) an incubator for artists

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