Located in the heart of the city’s commercial quarter, i. e. the pedestrian and centrally situated Principe street — MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo occupies what was formerly Vigo’s prison and court (1880), a place which constitutes one of the centre’s main attractions.
Opening to the public in 2002 MARCO became one of the youngest museums in Galicia. Although its name and acronym defines it as a ‘Museum’, there is no permanent collection at MARCO. It functions as an art centre focusing its programming on temporary exhibitions and a variety of parallel activities placing emphasis on educational training.
The museum’s main purpose is to communicate, to connect with the visitors and, above all, to create and promote cultural consumption habits, a hard, long-term challenge. MARCO has focused its programming on temporary exhibitions of a thematic and group nature and beginning in 2009 will complement it with a new proposal of solo shows. The educational program — visits and workshops for schoolchildren, activities for families, Summer workshops for children, courses for adults, guided visits, artists workshops — and a whole range of parallel activities complementing the exhibitions — conferences, seminars, lectures, concerts, seasons of cinema... — in addition to the services offered by the Library-Documentation Centre and the activities organised by the Friends of MARCO, are other essentials that MARCO offers to the public.
MARCO - Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo
The panoctical prison
The refurbishment project devised by architects Manuel Portolés Sanjuán, Francisco Javier García-Quijada Romero and Salvador Fraga Rivas strictly respected the original layout of the building, which followed the “panoptical” concept developed by the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Therefore, its radial distribution has been maintained by restoring the central panoptical space within its cylindrical structure and shifting the entrance to the exhibition rooms from the main facade to the centre of the building. From this point, one can see the layout of the building: three wings and four courtyards which extend outwards from a central nucleus, all of them with rooms around their perimeter.
The architectonic project
September 1999-December 2001
Authors of the project, architects and project managers: Salvador Fraga Rivas, Francisco Javier García-Quijada Romero and Manuel Portolés Sanjuán.
Production managers, quantity surveyors and architectural technicians: Manuel Cuquejo González, Ramiro Fraga Rivas and Julio Millara Turienzo.
Project management of special installations: IBINCO, S.L.
Safety and health coordination: Julio Millara Turienzo.
Construction company: NECSO Entrecanales Cubiertas, S.A.
MARCO’s lay out is structured into four floors and an independent annexed building, occupying a total area of 10,007 sqm.
Basement area: 2,960 sqm
For technical use: storerooms, areas for the reception, care and handling of artworks in transit as well as machinery and office space for the staff. This basement is not visible from outside and is a restricted area.
Ground floor: 3,481 sqm
The front portion houses free access areas such as the cafeteria-restaurant, bookshop, cloakroom, customer service and conference room, enabling different opening and closing times to operate within the museum. The remaining 1,658 sqm are devoted to exhibition spaces and the entrance halls to them.
First floor: 2,411 sqm
The activity area covers 1,690 sqm of which two thirds is exclusively devoted to exhibitions; other spaces are the Library-Documentation Centre and the pedagogic workshop room [“Laboratorio das Artes”.] The remaining area is used for transit.
Second floor: 1.012 sqm
This 880 sqm area is devoted to staff offices. In addition, it has two independent loft office spaces with exclusive access at each end of the floor which are used by the museum direction and the Friends of MARCO.
Espazo Anexo: 143 sqm
A small structure located behind the main building used as a project room. Exhibition hall: 90 sqm
Admission
Free admission
