Leviathan. In the guts of the collection. Transformation of the second floor of the National Museum of Contemporary Art

Authors’ Comment

Leviathan is a project of transformation of the second floor of the National Museum of Contemporary Art with a dual special purpose - a storage for the art collection and a visitable space.

Thus, the National Museum of Contemporary Art offers visitors the unique opportunity to roam (literally) through the guts of the museum, in that holly place of the storage, usually reserved only for specialists.

The context of the project is equally marked by the location of the museum, a building with a charged historical meaning, and the eclectic structure of the museum's art collection, inherited from diverse and heterogeneous sources. In this setting, the first gesture agreed by the team of curators and architects has been the architectural one, that of removing the interior finishes throughout the second floor, thus presenting the structural and technical guts of the building.

The space is conceived as an open labyrinth, with cocoons for temporary activities (theme exhibitions, educational workshops, conferences) and with a parcours full of surprises offered by the works shelved and stored in ingenious and creative ways.

The storage areas, presented in cvartals organized both thematically and following the aesthetics of the works, are enclosed within transparent structures made of galvanized metal mesh. Their separation is done by broad corridors, without a particular hierarchy or orientation, generating the idea of ​​a labyrinth. Inside it, one identifies four open spaces intended for temporary events that will be hosted on the second floor of the National Museum of Contemporary Art. In contrast to the storage spaces, these are bounded by white dyed perforated metal panels, with a translucent effect, and suitable as a support for displaying works.

Our Leviathan is a friendly animal, assembling people and art into the guts of the collection.

This curatorial move was possible due to the slowly acquired conviction that both MNAC and its public have reached a maturity that makes us all appreciate the intellectual, aesthetic, historical and – why not – moral value of this mass of art material. Thus, visitors will be able to find gems among the pebbles, as they are given the opportunity to enjoy an honest, fresh and practically endless look at the collection.