83 venues to welcome visitors for free during ‘Night of Museums’

Barcelona (CNA).- 83 institutions in Barcelona will open their doors for free this weekend to celebrate the ‘Night of Museums’. The event, which is held across 40 European countries, offers a wide range of exhibitions, concerts, circus acts, magic shows, screenings, performances, workshops, guided and dramatised tours, poetry readings and activities for everyone. Participating museums will remain open from 7 pm until 1 am and during that time one can visit more than 60 temporary and permanent exhibitions. New elements this year include the collaboration of Barcelona’s Art Factories, the city’s creative workspaces, in the ‘Creation & Museums’ initiative, along with the presentation of the Ramon Marull 65,000-piece stamp collection entitled ‘Estigues atent al segell’. More should be done to incorporate visitors in public activities, according to Commissioner for Culture of the City of Barcelona, Berta Sureda, in order to “help the growth and the interest of citizens as regards museums”. 

'Museums & Creation' is an initiative in which many of Barcelona’s Art Factories (creative collaborative spaces) work together. This consists of linking a creation space in the city with a museum to create, from different disciplines, an artistic production related to the theme of the museum or specific heritage site. The director of ‘La Escocesa’ Art Factory, Kike Bela, stated that the incorporation of the factories is “bringing new trends in contemporary creativity to the broader public”, at the presentation of the programme on Wednesday. “It will also be nice because the artists who have been working will participate in the night and will be able to explain in person and on site what they have done”, added Bela.

Another novelty of the event is the exhibition ‘Estigues atent al segell’, comprised of 65,000 stamps belonging to the Ramon Marull stamp collection, and including the completion of its works and its photographed documentation, inaugurated by the Gabinet Postal of Barcelona. This proposal will display, throughout six museums in the city, large format reproductions of some of the gems of the collection.

Involving citizens more

The 2016 Night of Museums will host activities for the whole family and for all ages, since “the role of museums is also to work on this approach”, said the Commissioner for Culture of the City of Barcelona, Berta Sureda, who believes that public activities should be strengthened. “I think we should be balancing artistic programming efforts with public activity. The idea of creating mediation structures with visitors and other ways to involve citizens in projects is needed, because they participate too little in the development of museum projects, and these ways of making them actively participate would, I think, also help the growth and the interest of citizens as regards museums”, affirmed Sureda.

The Director of the Fundació Joan Miró, Rosa Maria Malet, assured that “among all our institutions – exhibition halls, museums, research centres, etc. – we are able to preserve the principles and aims that define the activity and life of a museum, but above all, we know how to adapt to the circumstances and to the moment in which are now”. “We always say, here, at the Foundation, that it’s critical that the department of education be able to see what may interest the visiting public so that we can help them enjoy their visit and, especially, to come out enriched and knowing more than they knew when they entered”, added Malet.

147,694 people attended Night of Museums 2015

The Night of Museums 2016 suggests routes in differing but adjacent neighbourhoods in Barcelona, and then connects neighbouring museums via public transport. Each option then contains between ten and thirty museum suggestions. The 83 institutions to visit range from archives to art museums, through to history museums and those centred around food, photography, or music.  

The Night of Museums is an initiative put forth by the Council of Europe, in which more than four thousand museums in forty countries participate. This year will mark the event’s twelfth edition. The first Museum Night in Barcelona was held in 2008 and was participated in by twenty-one locations, with more than 53,000 visitors. Since then, the initiative has been gradually adding more museums and has experienced a growth in the number of visitors to reach a total of 147,694 in 2015.