The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Saint-Étienne (MAMC), which houses the second largest French collection in this area after the Center Pompidou, reopened its doors on Saturday November 9 after a year and a half of work.
The building with 3,000 square meters of exhibition space is renowned for its collections of American minimalist art, Pop Art figures such as Andy Warhol, and representatives of the Supports/Surfaces artistic movement such as Claude Viallat or Louis Cane , died Monday.
Among the 140 works classified “out of format” presented since Saturday is Fladrineby Frank Stella, a big name on the New York art scene, who died last May. This 1994 painting, bright colors and graphics inspired by the cubism of Pablo Picasso, measures more than 7.30 meters long. He is “one of the three achievements that the museum has” of this representative of the maximalist movement, indicates Aurélie Voltz, director of the museum since 2017.
Inaugurated in 1987 and designed by the architect Didier Guichard as a parallelepiped dressed in black ceramic (a nod to the historical link between the city and the coal industry), the MAMC of Saint-Étienne has just benefited from a first major renovation costing five million euros.
In the summer of 2025, it will be the turn of the Center Pompidou in Paris, also known as Beaubourg, to close its doors until 2030 for major renovation work. At the MAMC, the new walking route is now “more intuitive for the visitor”, summarizes Aurélie Voltz, and the exhibited works also benefit from better lighting installed in the rooms. “A new, more inclusive mediation offer for our audience, for children and families”, is also now offered there, she says. “Art and sophrology, art and yoga can, for example, meet there.”
The MAMC collection also houses ancient art, as well as an important collection of design objects, particularly household art and industrial design, with for example creations by Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier. In order to offer an exhibition space commensurate with the 23,000 pieces of a collection which is growing through acquisitions and donations, part of which travels around the world with “around 500 loans per year”underlines Aurélie Voltz, a project to extend the museum is envisaged.
