GAMeC between innovation and community: art that transforms the territory

The objectives are many and ambitious: after the year of Bergamo and Brescia as Capital of Culture, GAMeC is the main legacy for a city that has well understood the value of culture as a lever for growth and development. We are now committed to strengthening our identity, both in the territory and in the contemporary art scene, as a centre of cultural production with a horizontal development, through the use of different languages that complement each other and allow us to be increasingly inclusive. We intend to work to strengthen, on the one hand, our rootedness in the territory, through an open dialogue with the citizens, with the small and large communities of the city and province, and with the businesses of Bergamo; but we intend to pursue international relations through collaborations with museums and cultural actors.

Public participation is increasingly central to the life of museums. What strategies do you plan to adopt to attract new visitors, especially young people?

Our activities will be even more oriented towards involving different audiences, adults, families, young people and students, trying to make the museum a participative, inclusive and welcoming space where everyone feels at ease. We will do this through exhibition projects capable of appealing to different audiences, but a welcome that immediately positively activates the visitor in his or her experience will be important; and then there will be numerous in-depth and engaging workshop activities, for schools but not only. Thinking of young people, next to the new premises will be the new university and residential centre that will host more than four hundred students and lecturers, and it is precisely with the University of Bergamo that we are already collaborating and reflecting together on the future for the youth of our city.

PENSARE COME UNA MONTAGNA #5, Becoming Mountain di Pedro Vaz, 4 ottobre 2025 – 18 gennaio 2026

The GAMeC is already a nationally and internationally recognised reality. Are there plans to further strengthen its presence on the European or global scene?

GAMeC is already part of an international network, several of our projects are the result of comparison and collaboration with other museums in Europe and beyond. But we want to go further by continuing to develop new co-productions and exchanges also with areas of the world not yet tapped. Our goal is to bring Bergamo to the centre of global cultural maps, while at the same time enhancing our specificity: a museum that combines local roots and international scope. We are currently in dialogue with some of the most important European institutions to imagine future projects, starting from 2027.

What relations would you like to strengthen with other cultural institutions or private partners?

That of our province is an area strongly characterised by a pervasive and strong business system, an integral part of the community itself, where businesses interpret their activity as a social value. And our museum finds in enterprises privileged partners: the relationship with them is not only an economic matter, but a matter of sharing objectives for the benefit of the entire community. Over the past five years, the network of local businesses supporting the museum has developed strongly, demonstrating the potential of a mutually supportive relationship between culture and business; in fact, some of the cultural projects have been devised and realised precisely in sharing with some of them. But no less important is their financial support, which has greatly increased, leading to a virtuous model of public-private management that is almost unique in Italy. Over 60% of our activity is supported by contributions from private individuals. Business brings pragmatism and capacity for innovation; the museum offers creativity, critical thinking, new stimuli; together we take an active part in a collective reflection on ethics, sustainability, research and innovation.

How do you envision GAMeC at the end of your term?

At the end of my term of office, I would like GAMeC to be 'the museum of our community', a place to return to frequently, not only for exhibitions but for experiences of confrontation, exchange and mutual contamination. A beating heart of the city, a major player in the development of our territory. But not only this, also increasingly a European reference point for artistic and curatorial research.