Zaha Hadid Architects' Maxxi museum in administration
Steel staircase meanders up the height of the foyer in Zaha Hadid's Maxxi Museum in Rome. The building was awarded the 2010 Stirling Prize.
Source: Iwan BaanItalian government slashed funding for Rome’s contemporary art museum
The board of Zaha Hadid Architects’ Maxxi museum in Rome has been put into compulsory administration by the Italian government.
The news comes following a cut in public funding, which has seen the government’s contribution to the budget of Italy’s national museum of contemporary art fall to less than €2 million in 2012. The board is expected to raise the rest of the required funding - in 2011 its total budget was €11 million - through sponsorship and private donations.
Pio Baldi, the president of the Maxxi Foundation, said this weekend he was “very surprised” by the government’s decision because the attraction “is a museum that’s doing very well”.
The Maxxi, which won the Stirling Prize in 2010, opened in May of that year. Since then it has attracted more than 450,000 visitors a year.
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Readers' comments (14)
I am very surprised that no one has commented this issue in the Italian media.
Oh well, strange world this is...
This glorious Hadidistic architecture is a form of peversion suitable only for those with money to burn.
Sorry Akin, but this story has been, and is being, widely commented in the Italian media.
Try clicking on this:
http://tinyurl.com/77tqsdc
as suggested in another article, they should build a Rome theme park around the Maxxi
Hope she got her invoice paid
€11M / 450000 visitors = nearly €25 per person...
450,000 visitors pa compares to something like 10% of Tate Modern's?
Perhaps if they charged half the price, they'd get four times that.
All this in a City where there are thousands of years of history and artefacts around virtually every corner.
I always question the students about the viability of their schemes. Can they create s much space and maintain it? What pays for all the 'foyer'..
The facts: in July 1998 an international competition was announced by Walter Veltroni, who at the time was Mayor of Rome. Of 273 entries the jury selected 15 projects to go through to the second stage and In February 1999 Hadid was declared the winner. One of the members of the jury was.....Ricky Burdett.
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/sociology/whoswho/academic/Burdett.aspx