Rabat, Morocco: City of Lights, Capital of Culture

In 2014, the Mohamed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art opened its doors with an inaugural exhibition. It will go down in history : 1914 – 2014. 100 years of Creation. It established Rabat as the epicentre of Moroccan art. A fair reward for this town which, before Casablanca, saw the country’s first modern art galleries appear. In 1972 they were shortly followed by L’atelier, which from that time to 1992, exhibited all the pioneers of Moroccan modern art; including Jilali Gharbaoui, Ahmed Cherkaoui, Mohamed Melihi, Mohamed Chebaa, Farid Belkahia and Chaibia. Rabat now has several art galleries and spaces supported by private foundations. Art also exists there on a large scale thanks to graffiti artists, who are invited to express themselves on the walls of the capital every year. Rabat has many active private galleries such as Marsam Nadira La Decouverte Gallery, Abla Ababou Gallery and Fan Dok , to name just a few - not to mention foreign institutions and galleries. Private foundations are also very active, thanks to places like the Espace d’art of the CDG Foundation, the villa des Art in Rabat, supported by the ONA Foundation, and even the Bank AlMaghrib Museum. The latter exhibits, alongside its collection of modern and contemporary of coins, its very rich collection of modern art, whilst also organising several temporary exhibitions every year. The Capital can also be proud of the rooms managed by the Ministry of Culture, which include Bab Rouah and Bab El Kebir.

The Mohamed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rabat will bring together, from April 9th to August 31st 2019, about a hundred masterpieces from the collections of Orsay Museum in Paris. A flagship event and a first in Africa and the Arab world, because of the quality of the paintings. The exhibition is also remarkable because it touches the core of the impressionist movement, which has fascinated the world since its birth with its depiction of light.