On November 4, the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMVI) organized an official celebration to celebrate 10 years of its creation.
The opening of this museum on October 7, 2014, reflected the royal desire to provide the country with high-level cultural facilities, which promote creativity and highlight the principles of cultural democratization. Since then, the institution has continued to offer visitors, of all ages and backgrounds, a varied program, mixing Moroccan and international artists.
Thus, the MMVI highlighted renowned Moroccan artists, such as Ahmed Cherkaoui, Jilali Gharbaoui, Farid Belkahia, Mohamed Melehi, Hassan El Glaoui, Chaïbia Talal, Fatima Hassan El Farouj, Radia Bent Lhoucine, Meriem Meziane, Monia Abdelali, Yasmina Bouziane, Amina Rezki, Monia Touiss, Malika Agueznay, Fouad Bellamine, Touhami Ennadre, Abdellatif Laâbi, Faouzi Laatiris in the company, among others, of seven artists from the School of Fine Arts of Tétouan, Mounir El Fatmi, Mahjoubi Aherdane, Karim Bennani, Mohammed Melehi, Moa Bennani, Houssein Miloudi, Mohammed Abouelouakar, Houssein Tallal.
The museum has also hosted internationally renowned exhibitions by artists such as Giacometti, Picasso, Goya, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Delacroix, César, Cartier-Bresson, Arman, Helen Marden, Brice Marden, Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente… Different facets of the continent’s art scene shone during exhibitions like “Africa in Capital”; “Lights of Africa”; “Africa seen by its photographers, from Malick Sidibé to the present day”; “Art of Benin yesterday and today: from restitution to revelation. Contemporary section” and “Stronger Together” by Barthélemy Toguo, currently open to the public.
Museums, a stamp and a convention
During the presentation delivered in the museum auditorium, Abdelaziz El Idrissi, director of the MMVI, was delighted that “the National Museum Foundation has succeeded in changing the way Moroccans view art”. In addition to the art museums of Tangier and Agadir as well as that of Rabat, dedicated to photography, two others are in preparation in Casablanca, Guelmim Oued Noun and Laâyoune. As for Fez and Marrakech, they should see their Moroccan Jewish heritage museums open when the situation allows.
This museum journey is based on the permanent collection of the MMVI, welcomes its director. The institution is also a place of training, “a nursery to train curators, specialists, scenographers… Their talents are “made in Morocco”. The National Foundation of Museums of the Kingdom of Morocco (FNM) is directed by Mehdi Qotbi. He wanted to remind us that “culture makes you travel, culture removes the borders between people. With this museum, Morocco is sending a message of peace, a message of love, a message, I would say, of living together. We need culture even more than before.”
For this anniversary, Amin Benjelloun Touimi, general director of the Barid Al-Maghrib group, unveiled a commemorative postage stamp entitled “10 years – Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art”. It highlights the MMVI square, with the work of the famous artist Arman, “Final Accord” (1981). “Ten years after celebrating the inauguration of the museum, with a dedicated philatelic issue, it is only natural to perpetuate this tradition by honoring a decade of achievements and success,” declared the CEO of Barid Al-Maghrib. Then, the museum signed an agreement between the FNM and the Orange Maroc Foundation, represented by Hendrik Kasteel, general director of Orange Maroc.
Among the flagship initiatives: the digitalization of ticketing, the digitalization of spaces and works, as well as that of the permanent exhibition and three ephemeral exhibitions each year. A mobile application to offer the public virtual tours and the possibility of purchasing tickets online will also be made…
Private tour for everyone
The revelation of a sculpture by Farid Belkahia followed. The metal work is a long-term loan from Marsa Maroc, entitled “It’s 10 a.m. in April in Rajae’s Garden” (1994). Belkahia’s creation now stands twelve meters high on the MMVI square. The museum esplanade offers the public an entire open-air collection. Mehdi Qotbi and Abdelaziz El Idrissi took the opportunity to offer a very VIP guided tour to… all the visitors, among whom several ambassadors, including those of Romania, Portugal, Sweden and Australia, were present.
A few steps away, Ousmane Sow’s “Massai Warrior” “guards our museum day and night and looks towards the future, that is to say towards Africa”, commented Mehdi Qotbi. Fernando Botero’s horse, whose rounded mass welcomes visitors, is another long-term loan. Women are present, underlined the president of the FNM, with a trio of sculptures by Ikram Kabbaj and “The dream machine” by Niki de Saint Phalle. The facade of the museum is decorated with murals by Ilias Selfati, Ghizlane Agzenaï and Moustapha Zoufri.
In front of Arman’s “Final Accord”, highlighted in the axis of the museum door, Mehdi Qotbi exclaimed: “Look at this smashed piano. If you keep quiet, if there is no more noise, you will hear his hammers hitting some strings. Close your eyes, you will listen to a Beethoven sonata!” The entrance hall is overlooked by the majestic presence of mobiles by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, “Mary Poppins” and “Royal Valkyrie”, which invite you to take a dreamlike walk where fabrics and hieraticism, femininity and power mingle.
Cobra, a protean resistance
The highlight of the visit was obviously this winter’s temporary exhibition, “Cobra: A Serpent with Many Heads”, presenting nearly a hundred works, paintings, sculptures, engravings, drawings and photographs. Abdelaziz El Idrissi took the trouble to explain to visitors the history and specificities of the Cobra movement, a milestone of the 20th century.
The exhibition locates its roots in Danish experimental art during the Second World War. The Nazi occupying forces had established a less rigid regime in Denmark than elsewhere, which allowed artists to work more freely. It is therefore an art of resistance through imagination and creation that has developed. It integrated the concerns of the European avant-gardes of the time: Dadaism, surrealism, expressionism…
The term “naive” was first claimed. Research on dreams and the unconscious dominated, as did openness to despised cultures, particularly African arts. So many elements which led the Nazis to denounce this type of work as “degenerate”, “decadent” and to ban it. After the war, various artists and poets from Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands joined forces to create the group Cobra (an acronym for the city names of COpenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam).
Dates count in the history of art, the hanging allows us to admire the works of a movement that was making headlines (Dutch critics were screaming at “scribbling”…) at the very moment when young Moroccan talents were asking themselves the question of modernity in an independence on the verge of being conquered. One of the tributaries of Moroccan art is certainly hanging from the walls of the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, until March 3, 2025.
Murtada Calamy / ECO Inspirations
