IN FOCUS
From the Heritage Museum to the Open Museum
Morocco had little museum culture beyond the traditional model: the gathering of antiquities and historical objects into collections that told the story of the country’ s distant past. This was not accidental. It was linked to the vision of the late King Hassan II, who saw Morocco’ s strength as rooted in its traditions and past. In his view, the country should adopt modernity only in ways that improve living conditions while protecting its longstanding civilizational identity from the influence of contemporary practices. However, the new era that began with King Mohammed VI’ s accession to the throne brought a different vision of the role of culture and art in the country’ s modernization project.
”
The transformation was not limited to creating new institutions; it extended to the very conception of the museum.
The transformation was not limited to creating new institutions; it extended to the very conception of the museum. No longer regarded simply as a place of preservation and conservation, the museum increasingly came to be understood as a cultural institution open to society— one that values heritage, fosters creativity, and makes art accessible to the public. The creation of the National Museums Foundation( Fondation Nationale des Musées, FNM) in 2011 marked a decisive turning point. In addition to managing, restoring, and enhancing the national museums, the foundation helped restructure the museum sector as a whole and, as we shall see, has become the leading actor behind many recent initiatives.
Two Contrasting Models: The Official Showcase and the Private Collection
The Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, which opened in Rabat in 2014, is the most prominent symbol of this new direction. Through its architecture, collections, and exhibitions, it reflects a clear determination to give Moroccan art greater visibility and to integrate it into exchange networks with Arab, African, and international art scenes. Through its educational programs and public engagement spaces, it also seeks to move beyond the conventional image of the museum as a place reserved for specialists and collectors, making openness to a broad public central to its identity.
The Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden( MACAAL), which opened in Marrakech in 2016, grew out of a collection that predated the museum. It emerged from an initiative by the Fondation Alliances, established with support from Alliances, the Moroccan real estate group founded in 1994 by engineer and businessman Alami Lazraq.
The collection began in the 1980s and now comprises more than 2,000 works. It features pioneers of Moroccan modernism, including Ahmed Cherkaoui, Farid Belkahia, Jilali Gharbaoui, Mohamed Melehi, and Chaïbia Tallal, as well as African artists such as Chéri Samba, Abdoulaye Konaté, and Billie Zangewa.
MACAAL brings together three intertwined dimensions. First, it is a museum that grew out of a private collection. Second, it is an extension of a business enterprise that invests in the symbolic and artistic capital of Moroccan culture. Third, it aspires to become a platform for contemporary African art. Together, MACAAL and the Mohammed VI Museum can be understood as complementary facets of the same evolving landscape.
Tangier and Agadir: Rehabilitating Buildings, Writing the History of Modernism
While the Rabat and Marrakech projects relied on new buildings or stand-alone initiatives, the National Museums Foundation took a different approach in other cities. It rehabilitated historically significant buildings and assigned them new artistic functions, making the buildings themselves part of the story. Tangier offers the clearest example, with two museums operating under this principle. The first is the Kasbah Museum, housed in the Kasbah’ s former prison. Built in the seventeenth century as part of the Dar el-Makhzen complex, the prison remained in use until the early 1970s, when it was converted into an exhibition space of approximately 1,225 square meters. The museum opened in the 1990s and was renovated in December 2021. Its collection is anchored by a small core of works donated by the Ministry of Culture, one of the earliest foundations of a public collection of modern and contemporary art in Morocco. In its renovated form, the museum has also taken on the role of organizing temporary exhibitions, with particular attention to artistic creation in northern Morocco.
Located a short distance away in the Marshan district, overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar, Villa Harris was converted into a museum that opened in March 2021. Walter Burton Harris, the British journalist and explorer who arrived in Tangier in 1887, became a correspondent for The Times and later became one of the city’ s best-known figures. He built the villa in the late nineteenth century. The museum does more than recount the site’ s history. Its permanent collection spans two centuries of Moroccan art history, linking foreign artists drawn to the country with successive generations of Moroccan artists who helped shape its modern artistic identity.
Villa Harris leads directly to Agadir. The Moroccan businessman who donated the core of the Villa Harris collection also donated most of the Agadir Museum of Art’ s( AMA) permanent collection. The museum opened on April 27, 2023, in a municipal building that had previously housed a local heritage museum. The city refurbished the building as part of its urban development program through a partnership among the municipal council, the Wilaya of the Souss-Massa region, and the National Museums Foundation. Its distinctive feature lies in placing modern and contemporary works in dialogue with a regional heritage collection that includes, in particular, jewelry and carpets. This dialogue rests on the premise that these traditional crafts served as visual stimuli for Morocco’ s modern and contemporary artists.
Yet this idea does little to change how the collection is presented. In Agadir, as at Villa Harris, visitors encounter a chronological reading of Moroccan art history that sidesteps critical questions and settles for a succession of generations and names.
32 MATAHEF ISSUE 05