Since 1968, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo has commanded consideration on town’s bustling Avenida Paulista for its iconic modernist constructing, a red-pillar, suspended construction designed by architect Lina Bo Bardi. After greater than six years of planning and development, a brand new 14-floor constructing with an extra 82,600 sq. toes of house, will be part of it, an growth effort that can improve MASP’s exhibition house by 66 p.c.
At a price of just about $43.5 million, all obtained by non-public donations, this much-awaited annex, which opens to the general public March 28, represents MASP’s first growth since its moved to Avenida Paulista, giving the museum 235,300 sq. toes to work with, greater than double its authentic footprint. The unique constructing, too, has been renamed after Bo Bardi, with the brand new constructing carrying the title of Pietro Maria Bardi, the museum’s first inventive director and the architect’s husband.
Positioned throughout a aspect road and shortly to be linked through an underground tunnel, the high-rise Pietro constructing, with its black, perforated and pleated steel sheet shell, is a pointy distinction to the lengthy rectangular Lina construction. The outside “acts as a protecting ‘pores and skin’” for the inventive treasures inside, controlling the incidence of pure mild and decreasing inner heating as a technique to reduces its thermal load and improve its power effectivity, in keeping with Martin Corullon, of the constructing’s architectural agency, Metro Arquitetos Associados.
For MASP artistic director Adriano Pedrosa, who reinstated Bo Bardi’s iconic glass-and-concrete easel set up for the museum’s everlasting assortment shortly after becoming a member of in 2014, the growth mission respects the language of the primary constructing and collaborates with—as an alternative of detracting from— its magnificence.
“It’s actually not alleged to be as grand as Lina’s good constructing; it doesn’t want to compete with it,” Pedrosa, who was additionally curator of the 2024 Venice Biennale, advised ARTnews. “I feel it was very gracious of the architects to not try and compete with the extraordinary landmark that’s the Lina Bo Bardi constructing.”
The reception space of MASP’s new Pietro Maria Bardi constructing.
Photograph Leonardo Finotti
However the primary aim of the brand new Pietro constructing is to enhance the general customer expertise to MASP. The primary ground will function a customer reception space, which the Lina constructing doesn’t at present have. The underground passage, which can open later this 12 months, may even enhance public circulation between the 2 areas, as guests gained’t should cross the road to get from one constructing to the opposite. (It can even be used to move artworks between each buildings.)
“The Pietro is totally centered on the general public,” Paulo Vicelli, MASP’s director of expertise and communications, advised ARTnews. “When we have now this tunnel, the expertise will likely be even higher.”
Of the 14 flooring on the new constructing, 5 will likely be devoted as exhibition areas, whereas the opposite flooring will function versatile areas that can be utilized for seminars, courses, lectures, and even extra exhibitions. MASP Faculty, which gives artwork historical past and important research to the general public, will get its personal devoted ground, and one other ground will likely be for a conservation lab, each of which a lot the museum has lacked.
For the inauguration of the Pietro constructing, Pedrosa stated he and his curators selected 5 exhibitions that “suggest new views and dialogues on the museum’s assortment and evolution.”
Set up view of “5 essays on MASP – Histories of MASP,” 2025, at MASP, São Paulo.
Lise Alves for ARTnews
Every occupying their very own ground, or about 3,200 sq. toes of house, the exhibitions have been dubbed as “5 essays on MASP,” with three exhibitions that target the museum itself: one on its historical past; one on its assortment of African arts; and one devoted to works of geometric abstraction, considered one of Brazil’s major artwork historic actions. The opposite two will likely be single-artist exhibitions: 13 works by Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, which MASP acquired early in its historical past, and a 2019 video set up by up to date artist Isaac Julien that focuses on Bo Bardi.
“Histories of MASP” revisits greater than 77 years of the museum’s previous, reflecting on its contribution to fashionable artwork and museology. Images and paperwork, relationship again so far as 1947 when the museum occupied a ground of the media conglomerate constructing owned by MASP cofounder and early benefactor Assis Chateaubriand within the metropolis’s heart, are organized through an in depth timeline that additionally features a {photograph} of Queen Elizabeth II on the opening ceremony of MASP at Avenida Paulista.
“The exhibition is sort of fascinating, significantly for these guests who need to know extra in regards to the museum and perceive its historical past at a time that is mostly a turning level for the museum’s historical past,” Pedrosa stated.
Isaac Julien, Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement (nonetheless), 2019.
©Isaac Julien/Courtesy the artist, Nara Roesler, and Victoria Miro, London
The Julien set up, titled “Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement,” enhances the “Histories” present, trying on the legacy of Lina Bo Bardi, whose architectural imaginative and prescient has in some ways formed the form of museum MASP has turn out to be over its practically eight many years of existence. Within the 2019 video, actresses Fernanda Montenegro and 2025 Golden Globe–winner Fernanda Torres interpret Lina’s writings, giving voice to her concepts in regards to the potential of artwork.
To spotlight MASP’s assortment of European artwork, the most important within the Latin America, the museum selected to revisit an exhibition from 20 years in the past, however with a twist. The 12 work by Renoir are mounted on a half steel and half glass easel, an replace to Bo Bardi’s well-known glass easel shows by architect Juliana Godoy. Pedrosa needed Godoy “to consider a distinct form of easel show” as Bo Bardi’s easel show “fairly extreme, rigorous.” The tip outcome, he stated, is “a really playful, fairly whimsical” model of Bo Bardi’s model which might be considered within the authentic constructing.
Set up view of “5 essays on MASP – Renoir,” 2025, at MASP, São Paulo.
Lise Alves for ARTnews
The greater than 50 works on view, all now a part of the everlasting assortment and largely acquired over the previous two years, brings collectively artists from totally different intervals, backgrounds, and actions, akin to Lygia Clark (1920–88), Amilcar de Castro (1920–2002), Alfredo Volpi (1896–1988), and Rubem Valentim (1922–91), in dialogue with up to date artists like Sarah Morris, Daiara Tukano, and Lydia Okumura.
“Arts from Africa” is in a manner a center floor between MASP’s historic accumulating practices and its future. MASP has collected conventional African artwork since its starting and mounted main exhibitions on artwork from the continent all through its historical past; two items, in 1998 and 2012, added to those holdings. However the 40 works in “Arts from Africa” primarily focuses on items from West Africa made within the twentieth century, together with statuettes, on a regular basis objects, dolls, drums, furnishings, and masks.
Set up view of “5 essays on MASP – Arts from Africa,” 2025, at MASP, São Paulo.
Lise Alves for ARTnews
Whereas the 5 inaugural reveals within the Pietro constructing all draw closely on MASP’s everlasting assortment, that gained’t all the time be the case. After these reveals go off view in August, the galleries will likely be centered on momentary mortgage exhibitions. For Pedrosa the extra house for exhibitions will come in useful, not solely to indicate MASP collections but in addition for displaying momentary mortgage exhibitions.
“We’ve had the identical 2,000 sq. meters [21,500 square feet] of exhibition house for the collections for nearly 60 years, so we thought it could be essential to have extra space to indicate the collections,” Pedrosa stated, noting that the Lina constructing’s two sub-levels, the place its momentary reveals have traditionally been, will finally be dedicated to the gathering.
Jandyra Waters, Sem título (Untitled), 1982.
Photograph Marcelo Pallotta/Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand
When requested if the brand new constructing would resolve the shortage of house for exhibitions, Pedrosa chuckled, including “That downside isn’t actually solved. Possibly now we’re going from 1 p.c to 1.3 p.c of the gathering on view, however proportion is just not actually the best way to take issues into consideration.”
With a newly expanded MASP, Pedrosa sees the probabilities as infinite each for its acclaimed exhibition program, together with its “Histórias” sequence, and mining the depths of its singular holdings.
“We have been lucky that Pietro Maria had an unimaginable eye for artworks,” he stated. “Now we have now great prospects to arrange extra exhibitions, with higher galleries and to welcome folks in a extra comfy method.”
