3 – MUDAC – ARTS MUSEUM (ENG)

The mudaC – Carrara’s Arts Museum is a cultural institution dedicated to contemporary arts. Since 2012, the Museum has been housed inside the former seventeenth-century Convent of San Francesco and hosts a collection of works of art owned by the Municipality of Carrara, which testifies from the Second World War to the present day the city’s strong link with artistic production and the marble industry, tracing its evolutions in relation to the different languages of the contemporary.

The San Francesco complex, consisting of the Church and the adjoining Convent, was built in the 17th century at the behest of Carlo I Cybo Malaspina, prince of Massa and marquis of Carrara. The complex, with its claustrum layout, was formed without a real plan but with a certain randomness dictated by functional needs. In fact, over the centuries the convent has been characterized by different destinations, determined by the passage to different monastic orders until in the 19th century, during the Napoleonic era, it became a sculpture workshop. In 1868 the Convent was given to the Municipality of Carrara and underwent building interventions that transformed it considerably. The collection consists of works by nationally and internationally renowned artists who have worked and exhibited in Carrara from the second half of the 20th century to the present, from the 1957 International Sculpture Biennial to works from the most recent editions of the Biennial, characterized by greater artistic experimentation and the use of increasingly innovative execution techniques. Part of the collection consists of the works created for “Drawing Marble,” which involved numerous international artists in 2004.

Among the artists in the permanent collection are: Alberto Viani, Giuliano Vangi, Nardo Dunchi, Carlo Sergio Signori, Augusto Perez, Mirko (Basaldella), Jannis Kounellis, Giuseppe Spagnulo, Augustin Cardenas, Carol Rama, Andrea Branzi, Cyprien Gaillard, Nunzio, Denis Santachiara, David Tremlett, etc.