The new GAMeC will be based in the new Palasport. Construction starts in 2022

Bergamo’s new GAMeC, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, will be housed in the city’s sports hall.The museum venue has been searching for years for a new home suited to today’s needs, which are profoundly different from 30 years ago, when it was born in 1991. By mid-June, a call for b ids will be published to award the final and executive design and construction management, but the path to the new museum is taking shape. Work on the new GAMeC will begin once the city of Bergamo’s new Arena for Sport, which is being built in the space of Chorus Life, the neighborhood that Grupedil is creating between Via Bianzana and Via Serassi, is ready; the new Palasport is expected to be completed in September 2022.

The total cost of the intervention will be about 10 million euros (about 13 million euros with VAT and technical expenses), of which six million will come from a UBI Banca Popolare Foundation loan.

“The project for the transformation of the current Palazzetto dello Sport,” commented Mayor Giorgio Gori, “concretizes the ambition of making GAMeC a major international reference point for modern and contemporary art, equipping it with a venue that is as functional for major exhibitions as it is for workshops, conferences and educational activities. The project benefits from a significant contribution from Fondazione UBI, which we would like to thank, and is part of the broader qualification of an entire quadrant of the city. It should therefore be read together with the regeneration of the Montelungo barracks and the Stadium, the expansion of Suardi Park and the opening of the Orti di San Tomaso to the public, with the renovation of the Principe di Napoli and the creation of a bicycle and pedestrian pathway that from Sentierone arrives precisely at the new GAMeC and the Accademia Carrara: all under the banner of culture and leisure, as envisaged by the TMP of 2010.”

“The design of a new GAMeC, more capacious, brighter, more welcoming and more suitable to host the multiple languages of contemporary art,” emphasized GAMeC director Lorenzo Giusti, “is a goal consistent with the growth of the art collections and the progressive increase in the public that has affected the Bergamo Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art from its establishment in 1991, exactly 30 years ago, until today. The presence of a contemporary museum in its architectural forms, as well as in the substance of its activities, will be able to make a decisive contribution to strengthening the identity profile of a city that is productive, industrious, devoted to innovation and cultural experimentation, open to investigation and in-depth study of the great issues of our time and projected into the future.”

As for the structure, the current shape of the sports facility will be maintained; the grandstands will be demolished and a large lantern will be built inside, which will contain the exhibition part, through the construction of intermediate floors and by exploiting the height of the current playing field. It is also planned to build a restaurant, bar, bookshop and all functional services for an art gallery. The total area will be tripled: from 2,200 square meters to just under 6,000. Theexhibition area will begin on the ground floor: the full-height foyer, an indoor covered plaza, is envisioned as a multifunctional space equipped for exhibitions of large-scale works. The bookshop and informal educational rooms will also be housed here. A central staircase excavates the entrance to the museum on the first and second levels with the gallery for temporary exhibitions, carved inside the opaline volume that features a series of movable modular paneling.

The top floor will house a panoramic restaurant, accessible from the outside.

Pictured is a presentation of the design of the new GAMeC. Copyright: C+S Architects, Carlo Cappai, Maria Alessandra Segantini, Treviso | London

The new GAMeC will be based in the new Palasport. Construction starts in 2022

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