Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Contemporary art gallery in Via Palestro, Milan, Italy.
The Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea stands on via Palestro beside the Villa Reale, on the trapezoidal footprint of the villa's former stables, destroyed in 1943. Ignazio Gardella kept that perimeter and the service courtyard, whose entrance aligns with the villa's porticoes. The north and east façades remain 18th-century; the south façade toward the park is new. The roof, once copper-clad trusses with skylights, is now flat.
The pavilion was built on the site of the former stables of Villa Belgiojoso, destroyed by the 1943 bombings. In 1947 the Municipality of Milan sought space for its 20th-century civic collections, and Ignazio Gardella's design was selected in March 1948. It opened in 1954 with a Georges Rouault retrospective; after the 1993 Via Palestro bombing, Gardella rebuilt it with his son Jacopo, and it reopened in 1996 with a Leo Castelli exhibition.
The PAC opened in 1954 as the seat of the city's 20th-century collections, and temporary exhibitions began at once with a Georges Rouault monographic show. From 1979 to 1989, under scientific director Zeno Birolli, programming turned to research and experimentation, with attention to the New York scene; in 1979 Daniel Buren made a site-specific intervention in the spaces themselves. In 2003 the PAC helped found AMACI, the association of Italian contemporary art museums.
The entrance is through the old service courtyard off via Palestro, aligned with the porticoes that link it to the Villa Reale's main courtyard. The south facade faces the public gardens, and the Galleria d'Arte Moderna is next door, so both can be visited on one walk.
Maurizio Cattelan's 1994 sculpture Lullaby is a blue bag holding rubble he collected from the PAC after the 1993 bomb; it is now in the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin. The 1996 reopening exhibition was dedicated to Leo Castelli.
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