The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice is quite young - it was opened in 1990. However, plans for the creation of such a museum were under construction in the middle of the 20th century.
The first project to remodel the existing gallery was supported by Henri Matisse, but did not materialise. Then it was supposed to add a modern wing to the Historical Museum in the Palais Massena, but the project was abandoned, and a car park appeared in that place. Nevertheless, the idea was in the air - after the success of the French art movement "New Realism" it became clear that a museum of contemporary art was needed, and it was in Nice (one of the founders of the new realism, Yves Klein, was born here).
The museum was created with the financial support of the state. The architects Yves Bayard and Henri Vidal designed the unusual building. It consists of four thirty-metre high towers whose smooth, shiny facades of Carrara marble have no windows. The towers are connected by glass passages. The nine exhibition halls with a total area of 4,000 square metres are arranged on three levels: the first level houses temporary exhibitions, the second and third levels house the permanent collections.
The works on display here represent the various movements of avant-garde art from the 1960s to the present day. Of course, the New Realists are well represented - Yves Klein (the museum has twenty of his works), César, Christo, François Dufresne, Gérard Deschamps and many others. There are works by pillars of American pop art - Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, as well as abstractionists - Kenneth Noland, Larry Poons, Frank Stell, Olivier Mosse, Martin Barr. Among the minimalists there are, for example, Sol LeWitt and Richard Serra. There are also works by German Fauvists and Italian avant-garde artists, as well as examples of ironic and naive art, comics and graffiti.
Even if a tourist does not feel a special love for contemporary art, he should still visit this free museum - to get to the top. The terraces on the roofs of the towers always attract visitors. There's a lovely little garden, but it's not just that: the terraces offer magnificent views of the mountains, the city and the sea.
