Inaugurated on June 21st 1990, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Nice (MAMAC) is located in the heart of the city and links the historic city to the contemporary one. It is part of a cultural group comprising the National Theatre of Nice and the regional public library, in the extension of the Coulée Verte, a vast city park covering 12 hectares, joining the seaside.
With close to 1 300 artworks and more than 300 artists, MAMAC covers a vast period running from 1950 to nowadays. Its collections are anchored in the relationship between European New Realism and the American expression of the art of assemblage and of Pop Art. Thus the object occupies a pivot place. Two major actors of the art of the XXth century constitute the heart of the collections: Yves Klein, particularly thanks to the long-term loan of the Archives Yves Klein, and to Niki de Saint Phalle , who represents the most important collection of the artist in France (and the second one in Europe) after her donation in 2001.
Alongside, MAMAC offers a nice overview of the European and American artistic creation of the last 60 years. This proposal is also enhanced by the presentation of artists coming from the art scene of the 1980’s until today particularly marked by the advertising aesthetics, representational painting, the development of personal mythologies, and the shifting of objects. The major issue of the MAMAC is to link the regional art history to the international one. Indeed, in the late 1950’s, the French Riviera has been marked by an artistic emulation around the act of appropriation (with the New Realists), the art of attitude (with Fluxus), and the question of painting (with Support/Surface and the Group 70).
Over the years, this museum has been able to offer nice parallels of the artistic creation in establishing a truly fruitful dialogue. In parallel to collective exhibitions as De Klein à Warhol (1997), Intra-Muros (2004) for which 21 international artists were invited to invest MAMAC’s spaces and to revive the wall-drawing practice; Tom Wesselmann (1996), Yves Klein (2000), Arman (2001), Niki de Saint-Phalle (2002) Robert Rauschenberg (2005), Richard Long (2008), Robert Longo (2009) or Wim Delvoye (2010) have all signed a solo exhibition at MAMAC. The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Nice also shows the privileged relationships that link Nice area to Northern Italy. Many exhibitions showed the intense moment that the Arte Povera has represented for the art scene in the 1960’s: Giovanni Anselmo, Gilberto Zorio, Pier Paolo Calzolari ou Michelangelo Pistoletto. The contemporary gallery and the galerie des Ponchettes, located on the iconic Promenade des Anglais increase the prospective vocation of the museum. Today, the public is loyal and follows the museum in its choices with almost 100 000 visitors a year.
Aiming at being accessible to all kinds of publics, MAMAC proposes a programme of guided tours and workshops, promoting thus accessibility and comprehension of contemporary art to the largest number. Finally, the auditorium, the documentation centre and the on-line collection (via Videomuseum or http://www.mamac-nice.org/) extend this educational goal and provide an essential tool for researchers.