Sao Paulo’s MASP Opens Much-Awaited, $43.5 M. Expansion

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 a further 82,600 sq. ft of area, will be part of it, an enlargement effort that may enhance MASP’s exhibition area by 66 p.c.

At a price of just about $43.5 million, all obtained by way of non-public donations, this much-awaited annex, which opens to the general public March 28, represents MASP’s first enlargement since its moved to Avenida Paulista, giving the museum 235,300 sq. ft 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.

Situated throughout a aspect road and shortly to be related through an underground tunnel, the high-rise Pietro constructing, with its black, perforated and pleated metallic 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 lowering inner heating as a strategy to reduces its thermal load and enhance its power effectivity, in line 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 enlargement mission respects the language of the principle 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, instructed ARTnews. “I believe it was very gracious of the architects to not try and compete with the extraordinary landmark that’s the Lina Bo Bardi constructing.” 

However the principle objective of the brand new Pietro constructing is to enhance the general customer expertise to MASP. The primary flooring will function a customer reception space, which the Lina constructing doesn’t at present have. The underground passage, which is able to open later this yr, may also enhance public circulation between the 2 areas, as guests received’t need to cross the road to get from one constructing to the opposite. (It should even be used to move artworks between each buildings.)

“The Pietro is totally targeted on the general public,” Paulo Vicelli, MASP’s director of expertise and communications, instructed ARTnews. “When we’ve this tunnel, the expertise will probably be even higher.”

Of the 14 flooring on the new constructing, 5 will probably 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 College, which provides artwork historical past and significant research to the general public, will get its personal devoted flooring, and one other flooring will probably 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.”

Every occupying their very own flooring, or about 3,200 sq. ft of area, the exhibitions have been dubbed as “5 essays on MASP,” with three exhibitions that concentrate on the museum itself: one on its historical past; one on its assortment of African arts; and one devoted to works of geometric abstraction, one in every of Brazil’s principal artwork historic actions. The opposite two will probably 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 modern 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. Pictures and paperwork, courting again so far as 1947 when the museum occupied a flooring 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 kind of fascinating, significantly for these guests who wish to know extra concerning the museum and perceive its historical past at a time that is mostly a turning level for the museum’s historical past,” Pedrosa stated.

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 sort of museum MASP has change into over its almost eight a long time 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 concerning 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 metallic and half glass easel, an replace to Bo Bardi’s well-known glass easel shows by architect Juliana Godoy. Pedrosa needed Godoy “to think about a unique sort of easel show” as Bo Bardi’s easel show “fairly extreme, rigorous.” The top consequence, he stated, is “a really playful, quite whimsical” model of Bo Bardi’s model which could be considered within the authentic constructing. 

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 completely 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 modern artists like Sarah Morris, Daiara Tukano, and Lydia Okumura.

“Arts from Africa” is in a means 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 presents, 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.

Whereas the 5 inaugural reveals within the Pietro constructing all draw closely on MASP’s everlasting assortment, that received’t all the time be the case. After these reveals go off view in August, the galleries will probably be targeted on non permanent mortgage exhibitions. For Pedrosa the extra area for exhibitions will come in useful, not solely to point out MASP collections but additionally for displaying non permanent mortgage exhibitions.

“We’ve had the identical 2,000 sq. meters [21,500 square feet] of exhibition area for the collections for nearly 60 years, so we thought it will be essential to have extra space to point out the collections,” Pedrosa stated, noting that the Lina constructing’s two sub-levels, the place its non permanent reveals have traditionally been, will ultimately be dedicated to the gathering. 

When requested if the brand new constructing would clear up the dearth of area for exhibitions, Pedrosa chuckled, including “That downside is rarely actually solved. Perhaps now we’re going from 1 p.c to 1.3 p.c of the gathering on view, however share will not be actually the best way to take issues into consideration.” 

With a newly expanded MASP, Pedrosa sees the probabilities as limitless each for its acclaimed exhibition program, together with its “Histórias” sequence, and mining the depths of its singular holdings.

“We had been lucky that Pietro Maria had an unbelievable eye for artworks,” he stated. “Now we’ve fantastic prospects to arrange extra exhibitions, with higher galleries and to welcome individuals in a extra snug method.”