Niterói_Contemporary_Art_Museum
Niterói Contemporary Art Museum
Art gallery in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Niterói Contemporary Art Museum (Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói — MAC) is situated in the city of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and is one of the city’s main landmarks. It was completed in 1996.
The MAC-Niterói was designed by Oscar Niemeyer with the assistance of structural engineer Bruno Contarini, who had worked with Niemeyer on earlier projects. The structure is 16 meters high; its cupola has a diameter of 50 meters with three floors. The museum has a collection of 1,217 works from the art collector João Sattamini. The collection was assembled since the 1950s by Sattamini, constituting the second largest collection of contemporary art in Brazil.[1]
The museum projects itself over Boa Viagem (“Bon Voyage,” “Good Journey”) beach and also a neighborhood, the 817 square metres (8,790 sq ft) reflecting pool that surrounds the cylindrical base “like a flower,” in the words of Niemeyer.[citation needed]
A wide access slope leads to a Hall of Expositions, which has a capacity for sixty people. Two doors lead to the viewing gallery, through which can be seen Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro, and Sugarloaf Mountain. The saucer-shaped modernist structure, which has been likened to a UFO, is set on a cliffside, at the bottom of which is a beach. In the film Oscar Niemeyer, an architect committed to his century, Niemeyer is seen flying over Rio de Janeiro in a UFO which then lands on the site, suggesting this to be the origin of the museum.[2]