The work of Arnaldo Pomodoro, one of the most important and well-known contemporary sculptors, was donated to MASI by Credit Suisse, its main partner for over twenty years. Sébastien Pesenti, head of the Ticino Region at Credit Suisse, remarks: «The donation took place in 2006 on the occasion of the celebration of Credit Suisse's 150th anniversary. It is recognition for the excellent collaboration with MASI and the City of Lugano, in which we have been present for more than a hundred years." The prestigious donation today finds its ideal location in the Agora of the LAC cultural center, where the museum is located. The outdoor amphitheater was chosen as it is a freely accessible public space and a place that does not place filters between people and the work of art. Marco Franciolli, director of MASI: «This valuable donation offers a contribution of great value to the collection of the City of Lugano, in particular for contemporary sculpture. Being able to display it and make it visible to visitors to the LAC." Arnaldo Pomodoro's sculptures are present in large squares, from the Lombard capital to Brisbane, in prestigious public spaces such as the Cortile della Pigna of the Vatican Museums, the UNESCO district in Paris (the Freccia sculpture has also been exhibited in Lugano since Museum of Modern Art in 2004) or in front of the United Nations Building in New York, and are kept in the main museums of the world. Pomodoro has been able to give his plastic creations an unmistakable imprint and at the same time renew the expressive language of sculpture with great originality, coherence and effectiveness. His works are characterized by an extraordinary technical richness that transforms classical and primordial forms - the disk, the column, the sphere - into objects with an arcane charm that contain within themselves a multiform and articulated structure: works that "open" in deep gashes they reveal an inner world that is different and more complex than appears on the surface. Threshold: to Eduardo Chillida is a tribute to the Basque sculptor, which Arnaldo Pomodoro created in three copies in 2003, a year after Chillida's death. Pomodoro models two dramatically squared parallelepipeds, between which an opening opens - under a sort of architrave. The artist clarifies that this void is «a threshold into the unknown; an ideal reference to the final passage from life to death."