Museion

The Museion is the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Bolzano, in South Tyrol, Italy. Founded in 1985, it has become a significant institution for contemporary art in the Italian-German bilingual border region. Since 2006 it has been managed by the Museion Foundation, established by the Autonomous Province of Bozen and the Museion Association. The museum opened its current purpose-built venue in the center of Bolzano on 24 May 2008, after moving from its original location. Its name derives from the Greek μουσείον, meaning the temple of the muses.

The Museion was founded in 1985 by a private association with the support of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, initially as the Museum of Modern Art. It began operations in 1987 in premises on Via Sernesi under the direction of Pier Luigi Siena and the presidency of Karl Nicolussi-Leck. The institution's early focus was regional: the promotion and documentation of visual arts in the area between Ala and Kufstein, the historical Tyrol, from 1900 onward. In the early 1990s, the museum began addressing the differences between German and Italian art, reflecting Bolzano's particular geographical and cultural position. The name Museion was adopted in 1991 to signal an interdisciplinary orientation characteristic of contemporary art. In 2000, under the presidency of Alois Lageder and the directorship of Andreas Hapkemeyer, it became the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, with a significant emphasis on language in art, a theme strongly tied to the multilingual border territory. Letizia Ragaglia directed the museum from 2009 to 2020, organizing major solo exhibitions of artists including Monica Bonvicini, Isa Genzken, Carl Andre, Rosemarie Trockel, Danh Vo, and Francesco Vezzoli. Bart van der Heide has been Director since June 2020. In August 2006, the Museion Foundation was established, with participation from the Autonomous Province of Bolzano and the Museion Association; under the presidency of Marion Piffer Damiani, it aims to promote contemporary art from the 1950s onward.

The Museion holds approximately 4,500 works of art by international and local artists. The collection has been developed since the early 1990s, with acquisitions often made following temporary exhibitions. In recent years, most acquisitions have come from exhibitions on contemporary sculpture, particularly by artists who conceive sculpture as a means to establish relationships between objects and spaces. The collection is exhibited according to a theme-based rotation, with displays curated also by artists. Some works were acquired with funds provided by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano. Approximately 100 works come from a donation by the collector Enea Righi. About 2,000 works have been lent to the museum for twenty years by the Archivio di Nuova Scrittura (ANS) of entrepreneur Paolo Della Grazia. The museum's library, specialized in modern and contemporary art, holds 25,000 volumes, 50 subscriptions to art journals, and 400 DVDs.

The Museion's collection includes works acquired after exhibitions by numerous significant contemporary artists. Under Letizia Ragaglia's directorship, the museum presented solo exhibitions of Monica Bonvicini, Isa Genzken, Andro Wekua, VALIE EXPORT, Carl Andre, Claire Fontaine, Paweł Althamer, Rosemarie Trockel, Danh Vo, Klara Lidén, Ceal Floyer, Tatiana Trouvé, Rossella Biscotti, Cerith Wyn Evans, Francesco Vezzoli, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Judith Hopf, Lili Reynaud Dewar, John Armleder, Keren Cytter, Haim Steinbach, and Marguerite Humeau. The museum also organized the traveling exhibition Sonic Youth etc.: Sensational Fix (11 October 2008 to 4 January 2009), featuring works by the band Sonic Youth in collaboration with artists, filmmakers, designers, and musicians. One of the most controversial works in the collection is Martin Kippenberger's sculpture Zuerst die Füße (First the Feet), conceived in 1990, which depicts a crucified frog holding a beer in one hand and an egg in the other. The Museion describes this work as having nothing to do with religion, representing instead the artist's inner world following a difficult rehabilitation from drugs and alcohol abuse. The sculpture provoked significant political controversy upon its display in the inaugural exhibition of the new building in May 2008.

The Museion's main building, opened on 24 May 2008, was designed by the Berlin architecture firm KSV Krüger Schuberth Vandreike, winners of a 2001 European competition that drew 285 entries from 14 countries. The structure is a rectangular prism measuring 54 meters long, 25 meters high, and 23 meters wide, with transparent front and rear façades of glass. These funnel-shaped, glazed end walls create a visual and symbolic link between the historic city center and the newer parts of Bolzano, as well as the Talvera meadows. The transparency can be transformed floor by floor into translucency through frosted glass louvers, and shading elements allow for darkening. In the evening, the glass façades serve as projection surfaces for contemporary media art. The otherwise closed metallic envelope contains a flexible interior with six exhibition levels connected by a cascading staircase. Exhibition spaces, event hall, educational labs, library, café, and museum shop flow into one another without rigid separation. Adjacent to the main building, the Künstleratelier (artist studio) was detached as a separate structure, creating a small plaza between the two buildings. At ground level, the Museion has a space called Passage, designed by South Tyrolean designer Martino Gamper, freely accessible to the public and used for festivals and events. Two steel bridges with glass railings, also designed by KSV and completed in 2008, span 52 meters across the Talvera River on the west side of the building. These two correlating curved bridges, described by the architects as probably the most poetic bridge arms in the Alpine region, separately carry the cycle path and pedestrian walkway. A third venue, the Piccolo Museion, Cubo Garutti, was created in 2003 in the Don Bosco neighborhood at Via Sassari 17b. designed by artist Alberto Garutti, this mini-museum displays a work from the Museion collection or a site-specific project every three months, bringing contemporary art into public space as part of the provincial initiative Arte sul territorio.

The Museion is located in the center of Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy, with its main entrance serving as a physical and symbolic connection between different parts of the city. The museum is owned and managed by the Museion Foundation, founded in 2006 by the Autonomous Province of Bozen and the Museion Association. It operates three exhibition venues: the main building with four floors of exhibition space including temporary exhibitions, thematic collection displays, and a project room for experimental research; the Casa atelier, a nearby artist residence; and the Piccolo Museion, Cubo Garutti in the Don Bosco district. The main building's Medial Façade serves as an exhibition surface for videos, photographs, and animations. The museum's programming emphasizes research across diverse forms of artistic expression and developing close relationships with artists. Educational activities have been active since the 1990s, with guided visits, workshops, and the Museion Mobil outreach program.