La collezione. New consonances

MASI LAC

The opening of a new venue at the LAC has given the Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana the chance to exhibit its own permanent collection in a continuing fashion. Being able to present both the collection and the exhibitions at the same time means having the opportunity to show the binding relationship between the museum’s artistic holdings and the various temporary exhibitions. The works are exhibited on a rotating yearly basis, and the way they are mounted is aimed at diversifying the approaches to interpretation each time, so that visitors can enjoy the full wealth and variety of the museum’s permanent collection. Since the nineteenth century the methods of displaying and classifying art collections have been subject to constant change, proof of how the viewing and interpretation of a work are unequivocally influenced by cultural and historical factors. From colored walls completely covered by “painting galleries”, to a chronological arrangement by schools and movements, to room after room of rigorously monographic criteria, the methods used are never definitive nor are they irreversible. The most widespread solution today is chronological, but art history has not evolved in a linear fashion, and it can be hard, with an installation of that kind, to capture all the subtle traces. Perhaps more interesting and stimulating is the game of cross-references and consonances that can pave the way for new keys to interpretation. New Consonances suggest placing side by side the works of artists who are distant from each other both chronologically and statistically, fostering the communication between languages that are only apparently irreconcilable. Iconographic themes design an exhibition route whose purpose is to offer an aesthetic experience in which the viewer becomes an active part of the process of interpretation of the works.

Jean Arp / Silvia Bächli / Luciano Bartolini / Daniel Buren / Balthasar Burkhard / Andreas Christen / Gianni Colombo/ Pietro Consagra / John Constable/ Tony Cragg / Dadamaino / Lucio Fontana / Franz Gertsch / Craigie Horsfield / Paul Klee / Wolfgang Laib / Urs Lüthi / Fausto Melotti / Mario Merz / Mimmo Paladino / Camille Pissarro / Markus Raetz / Ugo Rondinone / Oskar Schlemmer / Thomas Schütte / Thomas Struth / Sophie Taeuber-Arp / Niele Toroni / Not Vital /