MAMCO, Contemporary art museum in Plainpalais, Switzerland
MAMCO is Geneva's museum of modern and contemporary art, housed in the former factory of the Société genevoise d'instruments de physique in the Bains district. The building, called Bâtiment d'art contemporain, offers 3,500 m2 of exhibition space and also houses the Centre d'art contemporain, the Centre de la photographie and the FMAC. Its collection of almost 6,000 works is shown without separation between temporary exhibitions and holdings.
The Association of Friends of MAMCO (AMAM) was created in 1973 to build a collection and persuade Geneva to open a modern and contemporary art museum. In 1989 the city acquired the former factory of the Société genevoise d'instruments de physique, and the museum opened there in 1994 under Christian Bernard. Since 2005 it has been run by the public-law Fondamco foundation.
The museum showcases artists who question traditional art forms and work across different mediums and approaches. You can see contemporary practices here that do not fit into conventional categories.
The museum closed its Bains building in January 2025 for a full renovation, with reopening planned for 2028. During the works it has no fixed exhibition venue and shows its programme off-site, through collaborations such as MAMCO x SOMA, MAMCO x Société des Arts, Dial-A-Poem Switzerland at the Bains des Pâquis and Quickkopy Conceptualism with HEAD-Genève. Check the museum's programme before travelling to Geneva.
Three months before MAMCO opened in 1994, the first exhibition in the building, Le Musée est dans l'Escalier, used the staircase itself as a gallery, with works by Maurizio Nannucci, Felice Varini and Michel Verjux. Other artists were added later, so the stairwell became a permanent display space rather than a passage.
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