Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, Château de Rochechouart

Located in the castle of Rochechouart, the Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne undertakes a permanent dialogue between contemporary creation and historical heritage. From the museum’s early years onward, permanent works have been commissioned from international artists (Giuseppe Penone, Richard Long, Dora Garcia). Over the years, the museum has acquired a remarkable collection which today includes more than 470 works by international artists.

Since the opening of the museum in 1985, ensembles of work have evolved around the major historical movements, particularly those exploring the relationship between nature and culture, such as Arte Povera (Alighiero e Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Giuseppe Penone) and Land Art (Richard Long and Hamish Fulton). Similarly, representative ensembles of work were created around English sculpture (Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Richard Long, Gary Webb etc.), as well as continuities and discontinuities in painting (Bernard Frize, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter). Major figures in 20th- and 21st-century art (such as Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, and Bruce Nauman) also form the basis of the collection. It was completed by an exceptional resource library based around Dada artist, Raoul Hausmann (1886–1971), one of the founders of Dada Berlin, a pioneer in collage techniques, one of the inventors of photomontage and an initiator in sound poetry. 

Each year, the museum organizes themed or solo exhibitions of contemporary artists, several of which have been incorporated into the collections (Annette Messager and Christian Boltanski, Tony Cragg, Thierry Kuntzel, Anthony McCall, Eduardo Basualdo, Yona Friedman, Simone Fattal, Babette Mangolte, Joëlle de La Casinière, Helen Mirra, Prinz Gholam, etc.).