museum

The 080 Barcelona Fashion Week of 2015 is being held in the Catalan capital, showcasing the winter collections of new talent. Its first day ended with the blossoming summer creations by the Catalan multinational retail Mango. This year, all the vibrant catwalks are developed within Barcelona’s Maritime Museum, located within a striking Gothic building that was the former Royal Shipyard during the Middle-Ages (known as the Drassanes Reials). This week, more than thirty brands and designers, from Catalonia, Spain and throughout the world, exhibit their Fall/Winter 2015 collections until the 5^th of February.

This week Barcelona welcomes international figures in fashion and the media for the 15^th edition of the 080 Barcelona Fashion Week, taking place from Monday the 2nd until Thursday the 5th. Over 30 designers will showcase their new Autumn/Winter creations over four days. For the first time, the show will be held in the Maritime Museum of Barcelona (a Gothic building once home to the Royal Shipyard), where both upcoming talent and Catalan favourites like Desigual and Mango are set to own the catwalk. Besides, the Sita Murt brand will present the first collection since the death of the Catalan designer in last December.

A site known as the home of the best ancient Greek ruins outside of Greece is to be upgraded to improve access for visitors. The ruins were originally built in 575BC and work to develop the site has been ongoing for more than 20 years. The 2,500-year-old Empúries site on the Costa Brava will now host parking and leisure facilities after a deal was struck between the Catalan Ministry of Culture and L’Escala’s Town Hall. Cars will now be removed from the site and facilitated at a new 532 space carpark with more efficient traffic management. The new agreement also allows for the construction of a new recreational area and a drop-off point for buses and coaches. 

The Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, which runs the surrealist genius’ museum in Figueres (near Catalonia’s Costa Brava and the French border), has purchased ‘Violetes imperials’ (‘Imperial violets’) from a private collector. The piece from 1938 is a dark creation, painted during Spain’s Civil War and just before the start of the Second World War. It will be on display at the museum from Tuesday onwards. The painting, the price of which has not been disclosed, belongs to the Catalan artist’s surrealist period, but does not employ the colours regularly used by Dalí. Nonetheless, ‘Violetes imperials’ does depict some of the symbols used by one of the world’s most important artists of the 20^th century. 

The Design Museum of Barcelona will open on December 14 and showcase the diversity of its collections and their origins, across 4 permanent exhibitions. The new centre, located within the DUHB building, will have a total collection of 70,000 items, coming from the previously existing Museum of Decorative Arts, the Ceramics Museum, the Textile Museum and the Cabinet of Graphic Arts. The aim of the new museum will be to "rediscover" the collections through a discourse that covers decorative and traditional arts, through industrial design, all the way to contemporary poster and graphic design. The DHUB is located in Glòries Square, in an area of Barcelona once known for its industry, but that has been recently opened up through extensive development and investment. According the Mayor of the city, Xavier Trias, the new museum "will reinforce the position of the square as an economic, social and cultural epicentre".

Miquel Iceta, First Secretary of the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), proposed his road map for the coming two years: no early elections and broad Constitutional Reform to better fit Catalonia into a federal Spain. On Wednesday Iceta held his own conference after those of the Catalan President and leader of the centre-right pro-Catalan State coalition (CiU), Artur Mas, and the left-wing independence party (ERC), Oriol Junqueras. While the two others support independence, Iceta opposes it. He totally rejected the road maps proposed by Mas and Junqueras and insisted on the need to work "on the real problems of Catalans", such as poverty, unemployment, budget cuts in public healthcare, etc. However, the PSC leader admitted that "there will be no solution without a vote", but "a real vote". Iceta said that before breaking up with Spain, Catalans should be allowed to vote on "a new agreement" to remain in Spain. In order to facilitate such a new agreement, he proposed that the Spanish Government cancel part of the Autonomous Communities' debt.

To mark the 150 years since the birth of Catalan sculptor Josep Llimona, the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM), in Barcelona, is hosting an exhibition of over 60 pieces of his work. The curator, Natàlia Esquinas emphasised that Llimona was the most important Catalan sculptor around 1900 and 2014 marks 150 years since his birth, and 80 since his death, making it the perfect time to host such an exhibition. Speaking to the CNA, Esquinas said that the exhibition was "to rediscover him and see all his work, beyond ‘Desconsol’ (‘Desolation’ in Catalan) his great masterpiece." It will be the most important retrospective of Llimona’s work, featuring some unpublished pieces. The exhibition opens on Wednesday and will run until 1 March 2015. 

In 1714, Catalonia was defeated and loss its sovereignty, its self-government, its Constitution and its freedoms to an absolute king who imposed a harsh political, economic, social and cultural repression that was prolonged until the 1970s, only interrupted during a few isolated and short periods. Barcelona was one of the last cities to fall, but it was ultimately defeated on the 11^th of September 1714, after a 14-month military siege. A few days after, all of Catalonia succumbed to the authority of the new dynasty, the Bourbons, who founded a Unitarian Spain, centralist and with an implacable homogenisation plan. Catalonia's National Day pays tribute to those defending Barcelona until the last day and aims to make citizens remember the loss of sovereignty and freedom. On the 300^th anniversary of the defeat, and in the middle of the current self-determination process, the institutional celebrations were particularly symbolical and unique.

The Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) is expanding into the nearby Àngels Square in the heart of the historic neighbourhood Raval. On 17^th July the museum unveiled the details of its future plans, which are designed to increase the flow of visitors to the art centre. These include increased exhibition spaces and the expansion of the existing MACBA Study Centre. The project is estimated to cost a total of €2 million, 1.5 million of which will be provided by Barcelona City Council, and it is hoped that this will increase the number of visitors to the museum by 15% per year.

On the 16^th July Barcelona art centre Caixaforumopened its last major exhibition of the season entitled ´Beauty captivates. Little treasures from the Museo del Prado´. The exhibition contains 135 small canvases from the great artists within Madrid´s museum collection such as Velázquez, El Greco, Rubens, Goya and Tiziano. It will run for almost six months, until the 5^th of January 2015. The exhibition will enable visitors to contemplate the virtuosity of great masters of painting from the 14^th to the 19^th century dealing with small-scale works. It is the second largest collection of works that a host museumhas exhibited from the Museo del Prado, one of Europe's largest art collections.

The 26^th edition of Girona´s Film Festival runs from the 15^th to the 19^th of July and will screen 175 films; a mix of feature films and short movies from 35 different countries. The festival will kick off with the restored version of Josep Maria Forn´s Los Culpables, shot in Girona in 1962. The event will also contain a new section entitled ´Made in Costa Brava Girona´, which will showcase new and old films shot in the north-eastern part of Catalonia. The festival is made up of 14 sections, six of which will include the presentation of non-monetary awards. Acclaimed Spanish designer, Javier Mariscal, will be a member of the judging panel.

The director of the Dalí Theatre-Museum, Antoni Pitxot, stated on Monday that he does not contemplate changing the functioning of the museum in the event of Catalan independence. "I think there will be no conflict because the museum was created by Dali and an intelligent leader would never put any obstacles to the continuation of his great work" said Pitxot, who was a close friend of the artist until his death in 1989. Pitxot also stressed that the museum and its collection is "not divisible". In his last will, Salvador Dalí named Spain as the universal heir to his property, and the state negotiated with the Catalan government to leave 134 works of art in Figueres and bequeath 56 to Madrid.

Barcelona's Sagrada Familía Basilica and Museum and Figueres' Salvador Dalí Theatre-Museum topped Catalonia's visitor rankings with 3.18 million and 1.58 million respectively.  In total, 21,593,992 people visited Catalonia's museums and collections during last year. FC Barcelona's Museum came in third place with 1.51 million people, followed by the science museum CosmoCaixa (1.25 million) and the temporary exhibitions' centre CaixaForum Barcelona (979,000 people). The last two are owned and managed by the Catalan savings bank La Caixa. The Art-Nouveau buildings designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí La Pedrera and Casa Batlló are also among the highlights, with 973,000 and 796,000 visitors respectively. Barcelona's Picasso Museum (915,000) and the Joan Miró Foundation (911,000) are also among the most popular art centres.

The History Museum of Manresa’s Cathedral (Central Catalonia), which was closed to the public until now, will reveal among its most valuable pieces a Florentine altar frontal dating back to the mid-14^th century. Such a work is one of the world’s most unique frontals, considerably large, embroidered with gold thread and portraying key events in the life of Jesus Christ, with a specific focus laid on his crucifixion. Art Historian Sílvia Ruiz, said to the CNA that this piece is the “cathedral’s jewel” and explained that it was purchased by Catalan merchant Ramon Saera in 1357. Visitors will be able to discover the frontal and others of Manresa’s gems in special guided tours once a month.

Le Corbusier, one of the key figures of twentieth-century architecture, was more than a mere creator of buildings. His ideas on urban planning, furniture design and his innovative blending of architecture within the surrounding landscape are an integral part of his unconventional work. Such different creative facets of the artist are at the core of the exhibition “Le Corbusier. An atlas of modern landscapes”, held at Barcelona’s CaixaForum from the 29^th of January to the 11^th of May. The exhibition, the largest dedicated to the artist in the past 25 years, displays 215 objects from the MoMA and the ‘Fondation Le Corbusier’, which stress the extent of his contribution to international architecture.