Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
MISSION The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is an independent organization that exhibits, collects, and preserves modern and contemporary art to provide transformative experiences that educate, reflect, and inspire us as individuals and a community. HISTORY After a distinguished 105-year history in borrowed and refurbished spaces, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art opened to the public on April 23, 2006, in a new facility within Overture Center for the Arts. Designed by world-renowned architect Cesar Pelli, the museum's exhilarating facility offers 51,500 square feet of space for the study, presentation, and conservation of modern and contemporary art, as well as a 7,100-square-foot rooftop sculpture garden. Public amenities include spacious galleries, a 230-seat lecture hall, a children's classroom, a new-media gallery, and a study center for drawings, prints, and photographs. COLLECTION The museum's collection traces its origins to a major gift from Rudolph and Louise Langer in 1968. Through donations and museum purchases, the collection has grown to become an important community resource. Works span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and include paintings, sculpture, photography, prints, and drawings. EXHIBITIONS Exhibitions are the cornerstone of MMoCA's public programs and have featured many of the most respected artists of the last century, including Robert Rauschenberg, Chuck Close, Sol LeWitt, George Segal, Ursula von Rydingsvard, and John Wilde. The main galleries, located on the second floor, host the museum's major exhibitions. The Henry Street Gallery presents exhibitions from the museum's permanent collection while the State Street Gallery offers a changing roster of exhibitions and installations. MMoCA's rooftop sculpture garden presents major works on a rotating basis in an illuminated garden setting.
