At the beginning of 2018, after extensive restauration, Palazzo Reali, formerly home to the Museo Cantonale d’Arte and now to the Italian Swiss Museum of Art (MASI Lugano), reopened to the public. Thanks to its two locations, the Museum, whose collection counts more than 14,000 works, will be able to display its permanent collections with a rich exhibition schedule. Now, with its two sites, MASI, whose artistic heritage counts more than 14,000 works, is finally complete. The first section of the exhibition opens with a marvellous marble sculpture by Tommaso Rodari (1460-1525), a Ticino artist considered one of the greatest Renaissance sculptors in the Lake Region.
 

Rodari’s marble bust, a recent donation by Enzo and Maria Grazia Pelli, is perfectly in line with the principle collection, in particularly with works from the first section devoted to the relationship with the territory and the vast and fascinating theme of artistic emigration. Some important works in the collection stem from the Gottfried Keller Foundation, founded in 1890 by Lydia Welti-Escher, who bequeathed a large part of her artistic heritage to the Swiss Confederation. Furthermore, MASI has a significant number of works from the 19th century, such as a selection of paintings originating from legacies and donations that left a significant imprint on the collection. Milich Fassbind’s legacy, which includes works by French masters from the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries (Monet, Boudin, Vuillard, Derain, Rousseau, Matisse and more); the Chiattone donation (including 21 works by the Futurist, Umberto Boccioni, and others by Tallone, Dudreville, Cremona, and more); the Ida Lenggenhager-Tschannen donation, with works by French artists of the second half of the 19th century (Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Maillol and others).

Tribute to the Panza di Biumo Donation
The second part of the exhibition pays tribute to the Panza di Biumo Donation, comprising 200 works created by 29 European and American artists in the 1980s and 1990s. This extraordinary donation contributed substantially to the museum’s contemporary art section in the early days of the Museo Cantonale d’Arte, which, in 1992, invited Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo to exhibit his recent acquisitions in an exhibition entitled The Panza Di Biumo Collection: Works from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
In 1994, this positive collaboration led to the donation of 100 works from his collection by Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, and a further surprise donation the following year of the same number of works. The quality and size of the Panza Donation accelerated the development of the Museum’s contemporary art section, which over time, was further expanded by other donations and loans, as well as by acquisitions made directly by the Institute. The exhibition’s works are displayed in monographic or thematic groups, highlighting those of the Panza Donation in particular, stemming from the new abstract, post-minimalist, conceptual and monochrome art movements.
The exhibition ends with recent acquisitions that reveal the latest experimentations in photography, painting and electronic art.