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 building, 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 %.
At a value of just about $43.5 million, all obtained via 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 identify of Pietro Maria Bardi, the museum’s first creative director and the architect’s husband.
Situated throughout a facet avenue and shortly to be linked 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 creative treasures inside, controlling the incidence of pure mild and lowering inner heating as a approach to reduces its thermal load and improve its power effectivity, in response to Martin Corullon, of the constructing’s architectural agency, Metro Arquitetos Associados.
For MASP creative 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 venture respects the language of the principle constructing and collaborates with—as an alternative of detracting from— its magnificence.
“It’s actually not imagined 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 feel it was very gracious of the architects to not try to 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 principle 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 presently have. The underground passage, which is able to open later this 12 months, may also enhance public circulation between the 2 areas, as guests gained’t must cross the road to get from one constructing to the opposite. (It’ll 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 can be even higher.”
Of the 14 flooring on the new constructing, 5 can 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 gives artwork historical past and significant research to the general public, will get its personal devoted ground, and one other ground can 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 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 among Brazil’s essential artwork historic actions. The opposite two can 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. Pictures and paperwork, courting 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 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.
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, wanting on the legacy of Lina Bo Bardi, whose architectural imaginative and prescient has in some ways formed the form of museum MASP has grow 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 concerning the potential of artwork.
To focus on MASP’s assortment of European artwork, the biggest 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 wished Godoy “to think about a special form of easel show” as Bo Bardi’s easel show “fairly extreme, rigorous.” The tip consequence, he stated, is “a really playful, slightly whimsical” model of Bo Bardi’s model which will be seen 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 principally acquired over the previous two years, brings collectively artists from completely different durations, backgrounds, and actions, similar 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 approach a center floor between MASP’s historic gathering 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.
Set up view of “5 essays on MASP – Arts from Africa,” 2025, at MASP, São Paulo.
Lise Alves for ARTnews
Whereas the 5 inaugural exhibits within the Pietro constructing all draw closely on MASP’s everlasting assortment, that gained’t all the time be the case. After these exhibits go off view in August, the galleries can be targeted on momentary mortgage exhibitions. For Pedrosa the extra house for exhibitions will turn out to be useful, not solely to point out MASP collections but additionally for exhibiting 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 might be vital to have extra space to point out the collections,” Pedrosa stated, noting that the Lina constructing’s two sub-levels, the place its momentary exhibits have traditionally been, will ultimately 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 remedy the shortage of house for exhibitions, Pedrosa chuckled, including “That drawback isn’t actually solved. Possibly now we’re going from 1 % to 1.3 % of the gathering on view, however proportion just isn’t actually the best way to take issues into consideration.”
With a newly expanded MASP, Pedrosa sees the chances 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 unimaginable eye for artworks,” he stated. “Now we’ve great potentialities to prepare extra exhibitions, with higher galleries and to welcome folks in a extra comfy method.”
