From February 10, 2024, the GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo will present Una Galleria, Tante Collezioni: an unprecedented display of its collections which aims to render all the richness and eclecticism of the city through Bergamo’s modern and contemporary artistic heritage.

An exhibition conceived to remain on view in the rooms of the Via San Tomaso venue for an extended time, in parallel with the Pensare come una montagna (“Thinking Like a Mountain”) program, which during 2024 and 2025 will involve Bergamo and its territory in a range of widespread projects, to be staged in collaboration with artists and local communities.

The new exhibition itinerary aims to accompany the public toward the opening of the Gallery’s future venue, and presents the museum collections from a perspective unlike that investigated in the cycle La Collezione Impermanente (“The Impermanent Collection”): the research, exhibition and workshop platform with which from 2018 to 2023 GAMeC presented a series of temporary exhibitions to stimulate reflection on the dynamic nature of its collections.

In fact, Una Galleria, Tante Collezioni intends to bring out the differences between the multiple fonds that make up the museum collections, establishing a non-chronological dialogue between more than 150 works by Italian and international masters of the twentieth century, also including works by contemporary artists, along an exhibition path that winds its way through the Gallery’s nine exhibition rooms.

These fonds intrinsically display a variety of languages, styles, currents and perspectives that are often distant from one another, while revealing traits of their origin: the tastes of collectors, their visions on the past or the contemporary scene, the works of artists that have been explored in temporary exhibitions, or even the initiatives promoting the work of artists and curators carried out by the institution itself.

The identity and history of the GAMeC’s heritage—be it donated to the city by private individuals and artists, or acquired by the Gallery over the decades—provide the focus of the exhibition, highlighting works belonging to the largest number of fonds from the collections to be exhibited to date, some of which are presented to the public here for the first time.

The exhibition path, curated by Maurizio Bosa, translates the dynamic idea of “putting on show” what is to be found in the Gallery’s storerooms into a both spatial and morphological metaphor. The structures, made of deliberately untreated light-colored wood, consist of shelves on which the works are placed, and of structures akin to open crates that provide novel perspectives from which to observe the works on display.

The rooms house paintings by twentieth-century artists, part of the Gianfranco and Luigia Spajani Collection; a selection of works by Giacomo Manzù and the Stucchi Collection, revolving around the 1950s and 1960s; and a major fond dating back to the second half of the twentieth century, confiscated in Lombardy and managed by the National Agency for the Administration of Sequestered Property.

What’s more, a selection of donations from artists and collectors of the new millennium, also including works that have become part of the museum’s heritage thanks to major fonds and awards: the Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l’Arte – EnterPrize, an international award that GAMeC has dedicated to curators under thirty since 2003; the Meru Art*Science Award, which for more than ten years has supported the research of artists investigating the link between art and science; the Club GAMeC Prize, conceived in 2016 by the association of Friends of the Gallery, acknowledging the work of young Italian artists; and the fond named after collector Arturo Toffetti, which has allowed for the creation of major solo shows dedicated to various contemporary artists.

Also on display are works that have entered the collections as part of the projects that the GAMeC has developed over recent years thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture’s General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity, such as the Italian Council: the program for the international promotion of Italian art, and the PAC – Plan for Contemporary Art, which allocates funding aimed at enhancing Italian public collections.

Completing the exhibition are a series of photographs from the Lanfranco Colombo Collection, and a number of medals and related models donated by Vittorio Lorioli.

Una Galleria, Tante Collezioni constitutes a valuable opportunity to rethink the institution and further strengthen the roots that bind GAMeC to its territory, while maintaining an active dialogue between the museum and the community and continuing to work on the enhancement of the city’s heritage, especially in view of its upcoming move to a new location.

Artists on show

Getulio Alviani, Arman, Mercedes Azpilicueta, Giacomo Balla, Enrico Baj, Yesmine Ben Khelil, Chiara Bersani, Alessandro Biggio, Julius von Bismarck, Bruno Boari, Stefano Boccalini, Umberto Boccioni, Piero Brolis, Massimo Campigli, Felice Casorati, Bruno Cassinari, Regina Cassolo Bracchi, Enrico Castellani, Gabriel Chaile, Christo, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Giorgio de Chirico, Michela de Mattei & Invernomuto, Filippo De Pisis, Mario Dondero, Piero Dorazio, Piero Fornasetti, Christian Frosi, Giuseppe Gabellone, Agnese Galiotto, Chiara Gambirasio, Francesco Gennari, Oscar Giaconia, Rochelle Goldberg, Hans Hartung, Agostino Iacurci, Wassily Kandinsky, Giuseppe Leone, Armin Linke, Nino Lo Duca, Iva Lulashi, Stefano Locatelli, Alberto Magnelli, Marcello Maloberti, Giacomo Manzù, Diego Marcon, Andrea Mastrovito, Roberto Sebastian Matta, Umberto Milani, Giorgio Morandi, Ennio Morlotti, Luciana Mulas, Ugo Mulas, Anton Zoran Mušič, Attilio Nani, Ornaghi&Prestinari, Francesco Pedrini, Lucia Pescador, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Giò Pomodoro, Mario Radice, Hans Richter, Tim Rollins & K.O.S., Antonio Rovaldi, Aligi Sassu, Alberto Savinio, Emilio Scanavino, Ferdinando Scianna, Mario Sironi, Giulio Squillacciotti, Graham Sutherland, Victor Vasarely, Alberto Vitali, Emilio Vedova, Rachel Whiteread.