BACO (Base Arte Contemporanea Odierna) is a non-profit cultural association founded in 2011 by Mauro Zanchi in Bergamo. Over the years, the curatorial team expanded to include Stefano Raimondi and Sara Benaglia. From the beginning, BACO operated as what we call a temporary museum: not a fixed institution, but a living format that activates itself around specific questions and encounters — and then transforms.

The idea of the temporary museum is not a limitation but a method. It describes an institution that refuses to solidify around a single identity, remaining permeable to different times, practices, and ways of understanding what art can do. Temporality, for us, is a curatorial stance — a way of keeping the question open.

BACO was born from a desire to dissolve the dualism between ancient and contemporary, between the art of memory and the art of the present. Exhibitions, publications, conferences, and collaborative projects became the tools through which we explored the porosity between historical imagination and contemporary practice, involving both Italian and international artists. Over time, our work shifted toward other forms — interviews, critical writings, and a deepened engagement with photography and the image — driven by a conviction that urgent questions about art are often better addressed through reflection than through display.

The decisive moment came in 2022, when BACO hosted the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) for two residencies that transformed our spaces and redefined our role: from exhibition venue to living platform, from display to exchange. What this encounter made irreversible was a new understanding of what an institution can be — a site of ongoing experimentation, where art is practiced as a collective and relational process.

Today, BACO operates as a research space — curatorial, critical, and relational. We curate exhibitions when the form serves the question; we write, conduct interviews, organize conferences, and produce publications when other formats open more. Photography and the image have become a central field of inquiry, as a lens through which broader questions about representation, memory, and visibility can be examined.




CONTACTS

Domus Magna in Via Arena, 9 - Città Alta, Bergamo, Italy