Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Roma

History

The present building, at 113 Via delle Belle Arti (near the Villa Giulia), was designed by Cesare Bazzani and was built between 1911 and 1915. On the façade are friezes by Ermenegildo Luppi, Adolfo Laurenti and Giovanni Prini, with four figures of Fame holding bronze wreaths sculpted by Adolfo Pantaresi and Albino Candoni.

The museum was expanded and doubled in size by Bazzani in 1934. A new building by Luigi Cosenza was inaugurated in 1988, but closed ten years later over safety concerns. A project developed by architects Diener & Diener in 1999 and 2000 was put on hold in 2003. In 2018 work was done to make the Cosenza building safe to use.

The museum

The museum displays about 1100 paintings and sculptures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of which it has the largest collection in Italy. Among the Italian artists represented are Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Alberto Burri, Antonio Canova, Giorgio de Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Amedeo Modigliani, Giacomo Manzù, Vittorio Matteo Corcos, and Giorgio Morandi.

The museum also holds some works by foreign artists, among them Braque, Calder, Cézanne, Degas, Duchamp, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Monet, Jackson Pollock, Rodin, and Van Gogh.

The Museo Boncompagni Ludovisi per le arti decorative, the Museo Hendrik C. Andersen, the Raccoltà Manzù, and the Museo Mario Praz form part of the Galleria Nazionale.