Conceived as a cultural hub rather than a traditional museum, the Mart's public spaces are intertwined with the Biblioteca Civica, Auditorium Melotti, the Teatro Comunale and the University.
As part of the wider cultural scene in Trentino, the Museum is a true contemporary landscape. The suburban nature of the area has enabled the creation of a high-quality tourist-cultural destination that caters to those who love nature, the outdoors, wellbeing and who seek a unique experience.

The Mart’s holdings are inestimable: they include some of the greatest masterpieces of 20th century Italian art, and every year the Museum organises dozens of exhibitions and projects.
It employs a staff of curators, conservators, researchers, archivists and professionals in the fields of education, science and communication.

From its foundation to the end of 2011, Mart was directed by Gabriella Belli; from 2012 it was under the direction of Cristiana Collu; and in June 2015 Gianfranco Maraniello was appointed as director for a five-year term. Currently, the museum is lead by president Vittorio Sgarbi and director Diego Ferretti.

Even before the inauguration of the cultural centre designed by Mario Botta, the Mart had a rich and complex history. The Museum's first site opened in Trento at Palazzo delle Albere in 1987, which has hosted a space dedicated to modern and contemporary art since 1981. Even then, its activities were characterised by a strong commitment to science, research and exhibition, which laid the foundations for Mart’s future.

During this time, the Collections mainly included artists from Trentino, such as Bartolomeo Bezzi and Eugenio Prati. The expansion of the holdings was achieved through the constant acquisition of book and documentary material: libraries and specialist archives, such as those of the critic Carlo Belli and the architect Luciano Baldessari. These and other collections acquired over time have oriented Mart's research towards very specific directions, which are still central to its exhibition activities: Futurism, 1930 rationalist architecture, and visual poetry. The museum’s mission has also developed through the activities of its education department, which is reaching an increasingly wider audience.

The roaring success of the exhibition dedicated to Giovanni Segantini was the momentum behind the establishment of Mart, which was founded in 1987 as a functional body of the Autonomous Province of Trento. Through art, the Museum promotes collection, research and critical production activities. Its exhibition activities cover many areas of research: architecture and design, the historical avant-garde and the 20th century, Central European art, and contemporary art.
Mart was granted the sites of Palazzo delle Albere, in Trento, and Galleria Museo Depero, in Rovereto. This was followed by the opening of a new space in Rovereto to house the Archivio del ’900, and in 2002 the new centre designed by Ticino architect Mario Botta in collaboration with Rovereto engineer Giulio Andreolli.

The new Mart opened on 15 December 2002 at the premises designed by Mario Botta on Corso Bettini. The inaugural exhibition was entitled "The Rooms of Art" and through the sequence of the rooms, the themes, works and authors that had been central to the Museum's research for years were introduced anew: Giovanni Segantini's "Springtime in the Alps"; the works of Fortunato Depero presented alongside a critical rereading of the “Manifesto della Ricostruzione Futurista dell'Universo”; the dialogue between 20th-century Italian artists and the experimentalism of Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Oskar Schlemmer, Kasimir Malevich and Natalia Goncharova; early 20th century trends such as Archaism, Metaphysics, Primitivism, Magic Realism and Neue Sachlichkeit; Fausto Melotti's "Seven Sages"; masterpieces by Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Piero Manzoni, but also by Italian artists that Mart wanted to introduce to an international audience, such as Osvaldo Licini, Gastone Novelli, Carol Rama; and American artists of the 1980s and 1990s from the Panza di Biumo collection.

In the years that followed, the exhibition and research projects explored many of these ideas in greater depth. Melotti's ceramic work, for example, was presented in 2003, while Futurist avant-garde’s contribution to the European revival of the early 20th century was one of the inspirations for "The dance of the avant-garde" exhibition in 2005. Depero's legacy was also interpreted by Mart as an invitation to focus on the applied arts: as a result, the Museum showcased automobile design in 2006 with "Mitomacchina" and typographic production in 2007 with "The word in art".

The archive of exhibitions since 2006 can be browsed under the exhibitions and events section: visitors are encouraged to consult it to find out more, by selecting "Exhibitions" and searching by year.