9/22 Sunday
So, today we try another modern art
venue, the more formal MAXXI Museum, the National Museum of Art of the Twenty
First Century (XXI). It’s a little farther out, so we take a bus, getting off
at a stop nearby where there’s a bike path and a pedestrian bridge across the
river, lots of people out for the Sunday afternoon bike ride or stroll. We see
a lot of guys wearing pale blue team jerseys, drinking beer with a sense of
purpose, and surmise that we are not far from a stadium, and it’s game day. The
strategically placed police trucks and soldiers in the area confirm this for
us.
We have a short walk over the bridge
to the MAXII center, a very modern building, set on a plaza with a café, where
everyone brings their kids to play around the sculptures. The building was
placed in a fairly run-down factory block, and has done wonders to rejuvenate
the neighborhood. A very large complex of auditoriums for music performances,
symphony and opera, is also not far from here. The MAXXI building is very
dramatic, a swooping, abstract construction of metal and glass.
The exhibits are interesting and
unusual. Hard to describe in brief. Here’s how the museum describes one major
exhibition of Francesco Vezzoli:
Embroidery, petit point, video, photographs,
sculptures, works by the artist from Brescia are plots of references, citations
using fragments of auteur cinema, the Hollywood production and from that on
television, art history, fashion and policy, drawing both from the
"high" culture as by the popular one. Drawing on themes pertaining
to the collective, Vezzoli takes possession of the mechanisms of communication
media and, through a complex weaving project of linguistic codes, unmasks the
systems, logical mechanisms.
Anyhow, it was
quite fun. After a relaxing snack at the outdoor café, surrounded by
well-heeled Italians having their Sunday afternoon get-togethers, we walked
back across the bridge to our bus stop.
The streets are quiet and empty.
Really empty. We figure that all the streets surrounding the stadium have been
shut down for crowd control and police access. We don’t expect to see a bus
here anytime soon, so we walk up a few blocks to another stop where the traffic
is moving. A few others are waiting, including a friendly lady who chats with
Bob in Italian, through his Smartphone translator. I doubt that much actual
information is changing hands, but they’re having fun with it.
We start to see scooters and walkers
coming from the stadium, signs that the game is over. It seems the Rome team
has lost. The numbers of people increases, and a few cars start to appear. No
bus. Then, we hear some banging and shouting. Down the street, near our first
bus stop, we can see clouds of smoke, something on fire. The riot squads across
the street from us start assembling their equipment, lining up, walking down
the middle of the street in a line, followed by their big armored truck. Everything is happening calmly, without any
urgency or panic. People continue strolling back to their cars, some snacking
on sandwiches as they walk. Hardly anybody even turns to see what’s going on.
This must happen ALL THE TIME.
Now we’ve totally given up on the
bus, and start walking. After about a half a mile, we get to a highway, no
sidewalk, no way across the bridge. We have to back-track. Although the riot is
blocking us from the bridge further down, there’s still one other that we might
be able to walk over. As we approach, we get to a bus stop as the bus arrives.
So we hop on, happily riding across the river, then unhappily watching our bus
turn off the street away from our route. We get a ride, whether we like it or
not, for several more blocks, until we get a stop, just about right where we
started from when we left the museum, about two hours ago.
We have a small trudge a few miles
in another direction to get to a Metro that we could have been smart enough to
take in the first place, and manage to get back to our apartment, a mere three
hour journey for the evening.
1 Video Included
Rome MAXXI Art Gallery
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