Museo Madre

In the historical heart of Naples, just a stone’s throw away from the Duomo and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, the three floors of the 19th-century Palazzo Donnaregina host the Madre · museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina: 7,200 m2 of exhibition space, with site-specific installations as well as works from the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions. The Museum takes its name from the building that hosts it, the Palazzo Donnaregina, which like all the surrounding area owes its name to the Monastry of Santa Maria Donnaregina, founded by the Swabians (13th century), and then expanded and rebuilt in 1325 by Queen Mary of Hungary, wife to Charles II of Anjou. Purchased in 2005 by the Campania Region to be turned into a contemporary art museum, the Palace was leased free of charge of use by the Donnaregina Foundation. The building was restored and refurbished as a museum to a design by the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza Vieira, 2012 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Today, the Museum offers to its public, in addition to the temporary and permanent exhibition itineraries, a library, a mediatheque, a bookshop/cafeteria. Madre museum is the witness of a story that made Campania region a crossroads of contemporary arts, oriented to studying and documenting the past through contemporary sensitivity and languages and so able of acting in the present and outlining the future. The Museum offers a variety of programs for visitors:events, guided tours and educational activities. It houses permanent and temporary exhibitions, artworks of the project Per_formare una collezione (“Per_forming a collection”) and site-specific installations by Italian and international artists, such as Marco Bagnoli, Domenico Bianchi, Daniel Buren, Francesco Clemente, Luciano Fabro, Rebecca Horn, Jeff Koons, Anish Kapoor, Jannis Kounellis, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Mimmo Paladino, Giulio Paolini and Richard Serra.

Guided tours available: booking required.