The GAMeC story is the story of its art collections, built on a series of precious donations, an expression of the providence and generosity of collectors from the Bergamo area. A story in the making, marked by the commitment of an entire community that has entrusted the Gallery with bequests and loans over a period of time, beginning in 1991 – the year GAMeC was founded – up to today. A “today” that is not a set, expired date but a rolling deadline that slides forward from time to time, in constant evolution, bound closely with the history of the city and its future prospects.

The Impermanent Collection derives from this story and is a research, display and workshop platform – conceived as a fundamental part of the GAMeC’s new cultural program drafted by Lorenzo Giusti – which reflects on the dynamic and in some ways contradictory character of a collection usually defined by a contrary (permanent) attribute. Through a series of events the program will put in place an action that not only constitutes a research tool for existing heritage but also a space for reflection on the art of collecting and on institutional acquisition policies, and terrain for curatorial experimentation prior to the opening of the new gallery, scheduled for 2022, and for procurement of new groups of works for the city.

The launch of the platform, which will engage the GAMeC in years to come, is entrusted to Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi (Sibiu, 1961), who has been invited to design an advertising campaign that aims to raise awareness of the crisis in the traditional museum model linked to collections, as well as the problematic transformation of cultural institutions into spaces for spectacularizing events.

Famous for his murals in the world’s leading museums (New York’s MoMA, the London Tate Modern) and for his biting cartoons, Perjovschi transformed drawing into a medium for information and critical commentary, focusing on socio-political issues both in general and specific to his own field, including the separation between high and low culture, art system contradictions, and the artwork as an asset-fetish.

On the occasion of the opening of the new exhibition series, the artist has also been invited to create a site-specific intervention inside GAMeC, as part of The Impermanent Collection #1.

The first appointment of this project – curated by Valentina Gervasoni and A. Fabrizia Previtali – will describe how the Collection began and how it continues to grow, presenting selections from its core in relation to the period in which they came to the museum, bringing together under one roof modern authors, masters of the twentieth century and contemporary works of art, as part of a multifaceted and sometimes cacophonic whole, thus supporting the complex articulation of GAMeC heritage, including the book collection found in the library GAMeC shares with the Accademia Carrara, for the first time open to the public directly from the Gallery’s rooms.

The exhibition narrative follows a chronological path comprising the works of the City of Bergamo that were included in the Accademia Carrara collections before GAMeC’s official establishment in 1991; a selection of works from the Spajani Collection, the first donation to project the museum beyond its original nineteenth-century taste; a number of paintings from the Stucchi Collection that were acquired in 2004, alongside works coming, among others, from the Colombo, Cugini, Lorioli, Radaelli and Zucchelli collections. At last, more recent acquisitions, with a section dedicated to the donations of artists and collectors of the new millennium, including works that entered the museum collection via the Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l’Arte – EnterPrize, Meru Art*Science Award, Club GAMeC Prize and the exhibitions in honour of art collector Arturo Toffetti.

The Impermanent Collection will also present to the public the latest arrival – the work Delfino by Pino Pascali (1966), reaching GAMeC through Tito Spini – and the Lampugnani donation, a group of small bronze and gold artefacts by Giacomo Manzù displayed in an exhibition project curated by M. Cristina Rodeschini.