museum

From this Friday the 29^th of October to the 5^th of February 2017, the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, is holding the exhibition ‘Surrealism in Catalonia. The artists of Empordà and Salvador Dalí’. The exhibition presents 70 works by 29 different Catalan artists from private collections or loaned by museums such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Cau Ferrat in Sitges, De l’Empordà, in Figueres and Art in Cadaqués, one of the Costa Brava’s most iconic villages. The goal of the exhibition is to mark the importance of the surrealist art movement in Catalonia, mainly cultivated in Empordà – northern Catalonia - in the history of European Surrealism. Amongst the 70 pieces displayed in the exhibition there are paintings, but also works of sculpture and graphic art, such as the masterpiece by Dalí ‘Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening’.

Barcelona’s CosmoCaixa science museum has inaugurated an exhibition replicating that of the Natural History Museum in London called ‘Wildlife Photographer of the Year’. The 100 photos on display were selected out of 42,000 images received in the eponymous contest put forth by BBC Wildlife Magazine in 2015. The pictures chosen for the exhibition were also selected because they stimulated “defence of biodiversity and protection of the environment” stated the director of Research and Knowledge of the ‘Fundació la Caixa’ foundation, Jordi Portabella. One can also admire the two winning images from the 2015 contest: ‘A tale of two Foxes’ and ‘Ruffs on Display’, taken respectively by Don Gutoski and Ondrej Pelánek.

The National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) reviewed what its 2016 exhibitions would consist of, although the showings unofficially begun in December of 2015. The star exhibition of the season will be ´Picasso and Romanesque Art´, a joint venture with the Picasso Museum in Paris. Besides this, other exhibition centred onLuis “el Divino” Morales, Renaissance painting, 20^th century photography and features on several Catalan artists, such as Lluïsa Vidal and Ismael Smith, will complete the MNAC’s agenda for 2016. The MNAC’s director, Pepe Serra, celebrated that the museum is finally “starting to have a normal planning rhythm for a museum of its size” which will allow the MNAC’s calendar to synchronise with “other international museums”.

The exhibition 'Drawing Versailles. Charles Le Brun (1619-1690)', from the Paris Louvre Museum's collection, will be displayed in Barcelona’s CaixaForum until the 14^th of February. The exhibition shows the preliminary cartoons and sketches that painter Charles Le Brun did for the Staircase of the Ambassadors and the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. The drawings include studies of characters, allegorical figures, trophies and animals that formed part of the artist’s compositions, conceived as a great symbolic jigsaw puzzle. The Louvre Museum has 300 of these drawings and 78 of them will now be displayed in Barcelona's CaixaForum. The exhibition is the fruit of an agreement reached in 2009 between the two institutions through which many exhibitions from the Louvre can be shown in the Catalan capital. 

The collaboration will bring to Catalonia some of the masterpieces of the great civilisations that are currently on display in the British Museum. Most of them are pieces that are rarely loaned to other museums and that will be seen in Spain for the first time ever. The four projects will focus on Medieval Europe, Ancient Greece, the Pharaohs of Egypt and the Phoenicians. Between 2016 and 2020, the exhibitions will be displayed in Barcelona, Girona, Tarragona, Lleida, Palma and three other ‘CaixaForum’, the centres that normally host the exhibitions promoted and organised by ‘La Caixa’ Bank Foundation. The Bank Foundation of ‘La Caixa’, which is the biggest bank in Catalonia, is the section of the bank that focuses on welfare projects committed to society, education, science, the arts and culture.

Barcelona's Contemporary Art Museum (MACBA) is entering a new period, under the leadership of Ferran Barenblit, born in Buenos Aires in 1968. The international competition opened to choose MACBA's new director has resulted in the hiring of Barenblit, who until the present day was Director of Madrid's CA2M Art Centre. Previously, the Argentinean manager had been Director of Barcelona’s Santa Mónica Art Centre (from 2003 to 2008). The MACBA opened a public competition in March, after the previous Director, Bartomeu Marí, resigned in the wake of the great controversy surrounding the last-minute cancellation of a temporary exhibition because one of the sculptures depicted the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos, being sodomised by a dog. The sculpture had been designed by the Austrian artist Ines Doujak. Marí decided to cancel the opening, provoking loud protests from curators and a significant public controversy, with accusations of censorship being aimed at the director.

The current manager of FC Bayern Munich, Catalonia-born Pep Guardiola, will occupy the symbolic last position on the unitary pro-independence list running in the next Catalan Parliament elections, which groups together Liberals, Social-Democrats, Christian-Democrats, Socialists, Greens and civil society organisations, according to news released on Monday morning by the ‘El País’ and ‘El Periódico’ newspapers. The elections are scheduled for 27 September and many parties are planning to transform them into a ‘de facto’ plebiscite on independence after the Spanish Government’s unilateral blocking attitude for the last 3 years. For many people, this is the only way left to hold a legal vote on independence, after the Spanish Government has totally rejected even talking about the self-determination claims democratically expressed by a majority of Catalan citizens through the last Catalan elections in 2012 and many peaceful mass demonstrations.

The 10^th edition of Barcelona Design Week started Monday with a programme of more than 70 activities, under the slogan 'Design is here!' ('el Disseny és aquí'). The event is a call for companies, designers and other agents of the business, innovation and creativity fields, and it is also open to the wider public, with event locations scattered throughout Barcelona. Barcelona Design Week also marks the beginning of the 5^th Barcelona Design Festival, which is being held from 8 June to 5 July. Among the new features is the 'Design is Future Congresstival,' midway between the conference and the festival, which delves into the world of innovation through design.

From Wednesday 29^th of April onwards, the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) will exhibit 'Gabriel Casas: Photography, journalism and modernity, 1929-1939', the first great monographic exhibition dedicated to one of the most important photographers of the interwar period. Standing out as the photographer who introduced 'New Vision' photography in Spain, Casas achieved "great maturity" in the decade represented in this exposition with 120 photographs and 4 thematic areas: 'Records', 'New Vision', 'Photography' and 'Portraits', as explained by the curator Juan Naranjo. The exhibition dedicated to Gabriel Casas is a cooperative production between the MNAC together with the National Archive of Catalonia and La Caixa's foundation for social and cultural work. The show will later travel to the CaixaForum art galleries in Girona (North-East Catalonia) and Tarragona (South Catalonia).

The 27^th of April is the feast day of the Mare de Déu deMontserrat,Our Lady of Montserrat, or as she is more affectionately called in Catalonia, la Moreneta, "the little dark-skinned one". One of the only black images of the Virgin Mary in Europe, the Virgin of Montserrat is the patron saint of all dioceses in Catalonia and together with St. George (Sant Jordi) is considered the patron saint of the territory. In recent history, she has also become a symbol for Catalan national identity and Catholic Catalan nationalism. Up in the mountains of Montserrat, the Santa María abbey celebrated on Monday with a mass dedicated to the Virgin, and outside in the main square there were numerous traditional activities including people making human towers (castells), music bands and food stalls, as well as groups dancing the traditional Catalan dance, La Sardana.

The country house where one of the world's greatest artists of the 20^th century, Joan Miró, spent his summers in his teenage and adult years will be transformed into a museum. The Mas Miró, the artist's family farmhouse located in Mont-roig del Camp, in the Catalan Province of Tarragona, will be open for visitors by summer 2016. The project – developed by RCR and Varis Arquitectes studios – will consist of two phases. The first – costing a total of €2.5 million – entails the conversion of the farmhouse and the painter's studio into a museum, the renovation of the housekeeper's house and the construction of an entry pavilion. The second – which will cost €3 million – envisages the creation of new areas such as: a restaurant, a new car park, a multipurpose room and a workshop space. Work is due to start in the coming weeks.

Barcelona's Picasso Museum unveiled on Friday the first exhibition in the world analysing how Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí artistically admired and influenced each other, despite their political differences. The Catalan museum has opened the most awaited temporary exhibition of the season, which will run until 28 June. 'Picasso/Dalí. Dalí/Picasso' showcases 78 works of these two giants of 20^th century art, including paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures and carvings. They tell the story of their artistic relationship and how their works evolved by setting many parallels between the two. The exhibition also includes 33 documents such as some letters that Gala and Salvador Dalí sent to Picasso, which had only been on show once, in Paris.

This week, the Museum of the History of Barcelona (MUHBA) launched a new exhibition 'Barcelona in late antiquity: Christianity, Visigoths and the city'. 120 new pieces dating back from between the 4^th and 7^th centuries are going to be on display in the museum's Monumental Site of Plaça del Rei, in the heart of the Gothic Quarter. The launch has also been an opportunity to present the re-designed archaeological tour of this specific underground site, with its area which is open to the public growing in size. "The new archaeological discoveries contribute to explain the main transformations that took place in Barcelona, from Roman Barcino to Christianity", the curator Julia Beltran de Heredia said to CNA.

The "La Caixa" Foundation has opened Moche Art from Ancient Peru. Gold, Myths and Rituals, an exhibition to be hosted at CaixaForum in Barcelona until the 7th of June. The exhibition includes 200 pieces of pre-Incan Peruvian art from the collection of the Lima-based Larco Museum. According to its curator Ulla Holmquist, the exhibition is conceived "as a route to understanding the Andean worldview through art". The launch of the event coincides with the recent opening of Barcelona's Museum of World Cultures, which hosts a permanent exhibition of more than 500 pieces from the artistic heritage and traditions of Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. The Museum of World Cultures occupies two Gothic palaces located in the Born neighbourhood, just next to the Picasso Museum.

The brand Sita Murt showed that, despite the recent death of renowned designer Sita Murt, they are still able to present a remarkable collection and will continue her work with exclusive designs for women, sold throughout the world. The collection presented women’s trends for the Fall/Winter season 2015/2016. The catwalk took place in the Catalan capital’s Maritime Museum, which is hosting the 15^th edition of the 080 Barcelona Fashion Week. Isabel Esteve Murt, head designer of the brand, stated that she is implementing Sita Murt’s way of adding details. Isabel is Sita Murt’s daughter and has taken her mother’s place by taking over control of the brand. She claimed in an interview that the collection had a British influence that could be seen in the shoes, trousers and colours.