How „Gianni Versace Retrospective“ came to Singen

Two things stand out in Singen: the old Hohentwiel fortress mountain, which towers above the city, and the MAC Museum Art & Cars at its feet. The fortress on the Hohentwiel was of strategic importance long before the town of Singen existed, which only grew into a town at the end of the 19th century, mainly due to the settlement of companies from neighbouring Switzerland.

The MAC Museum goes back to the initiative of the couple Gabriele and Herrmann Maier, who together laid the basis for the establishment of the Südwestdeutsche Kunststiftung, from which the museum emerged in 2013, and a further building was added in 2019. The passion of the Maier couple are historical cars that are presented in changing exhibitions in the houses, but also contemporary art and fashion. Both buildings of the MAC Museum were designed by the architect Daniel Binder and take up the language of shapes and colors of the extinct volcano “Hohentwiel” behind them. The radical modernity of the building prompted the well-known German-language newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine” to compare the complex with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

The MAC 1 from 2013 now offers the spectacular and minimalist backdrop for the works of Gianni Versace in a region that is reminiscent of central Italy in terms of the hours of sunshine and the landscape. Indeed, the mountains of the Swiss Alps are within sight and Milan can be reached in 4 hours by car.

The MAC Museum is Singen’s cultural gateway to the world and hot-spot for visitors from nearby Zurich, from the entire Lake Constance area, Basel and Stuttgart. Visiting an exhibition in Singen is always an encounter with an exciting house in an opulent landscape. However, it was the commitment of the museum’s founders that ultimately made the difference for us to curate the exhibition in a fresh and new way for this setting. The opening of the exhibition on September 19, 2020 fell at a very special, difficult time due to the corona pandemic. Therefore, the time of the necessary closure of the museum from November 2020 to May 22, 2021 will be compensated by an extension to autumn 2021 in order to give as many friends of art and fashion as possible the opportunity to see this wonderful exhibition.