16th of July 2010

An Unforgettable Evening: Satie’s music fills the Museum’s rooms and courtyards

A few days ago we presented a thoroughly out-of-the-ordinary activity at the Museu Picasso: as a complement to the current “Picasso vs. Rusiñol” exhibition, which among other things touches on the friendship of both artists with the French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925), we put on a special performance of the complete repertoire of Satie’s compositions for piano.

That last fact alone is enough to make it clear that this was no ordinary concert: having assembled all of the works for piano, some of which were very difficult to get hold of, the recital lasted almost six hours! Read more »

17th of June 2010

Santiago Rusiñol’s The Prodigal Puppet

A painter, playwright, musician, storyteller and one of the supreme exponents of Modernista bohemianism, Santiago Rusiñol was the author of such emblematic plays for the Catalan stage as L’auca del senyor Esteve, L’hèroe, Els savis de Vilatrista and L’alegria que passa. Read more »

3rd of June 2010

At the Picasso Museum We Want to Create Community Spirit! We Explain Our First Project in Collaboration with Schools in La Ribera

At the Education Service of the Picasso Museum we have developed our first neighbourhood project over the 2009-2010 school year, a proposal for collaboration with the educational institutions attended by the children who are our neighbours. Our primary aim is to offer the museum as an educational resource for primary and secondary schools in La Ribera for them to use it as a starting point for exploring their reality, as well as work with Picasso in a cross-disciplinary way.

The programme is designed to offer proposals which vary in subject matter, format and duration that are suited to the realities of each institution. We also want to incorporate an artist into the process of designing the project and developing it, since working with contemporary artists contributes modern languages, familiarises the students with creation processes and enables Picasso’s work to be brought into the present. Read more »

9th of April 2010

More than a performing arts season: a great experience of working together!

We are launching the Meeting Point Season of Multidisciplinary Performing Arts, a brand new venture conceived as an exploration of how the languages of circus, dance and music interrelated and in turn give rise to new languages and new disciplines.

These creative fields are very close to the processes and interests of Pablo Picasso, but at the same time they are disciplines that have undergone a formal and conceptual evolution. Here at the Museum we wanted to explore this evolution and contribute to a tremendously vital cultural moment that is of great relevance today. Read more »

29th of March 2010

Picasso stories

What story do you think lies behind some of Picasso’s works?

Barcelona’s Picasso Museum and the UOC’s lletrA project invite you to take part in the “Picasso in Words” micro-story writing competition.

The micro-works for this prize should be brief stories of a maximum of 1,500 characters (including spaces). The subject matter should be inspired by one of the following works from the collection at Barcelona’s Picasso Museum: Read more »

12th of March 2010

In the Picasso Museu we tell stories… with imagination

Last Saturday took place the first “Contes i Tocs” that this Spring Patricia McGill will tell to children and their parents within the museum galleries.

This activity was organised by Marta Iglesias from Public Programmes. I wanted to attend both out of professional interest so as to get to know this new offer for the family public, but also, as a mother, to live this experience with my children.

The participants and Patricia met up in the Pati Finestres of the museum, and that was where the story began. Nice blue coloured monsters with three eyes and one leg, started to spring up in everyone’s imagination, while she made us take hold of a rope, and pulling on it, led us round the rooms of the museum until we reached Las Meninas, where we found more monsters, princesses, cats and dogs, vacuum cleaner-coffee machines, piano-boats, and even the Little Prince and Little Red Riding Hood… The children and their parents added bits to the story and she intertwined the stories while offering a different way of looking at the works of Picasso, based on her words and our imagination, both individually and what we constructed together between us. Read more »

20th of January 2010

21 images of what happened in 2009 in the Picasso Museum

Looking back over 2009, what can we say we are proud of? Of the number of visitors? Of course that’s important but not more than other aspects, although naturally we value and are very grateful for the number of visitors we receive.

However, what we really are proud of is the fact of promoting the educational programme, of having produced some temporary exhibitions that, as a result of the research, have contributed new knowledge about the works of Picasso, of having renovated the museographic presentation of the series of Las Meninas, of having restored the ceilings of the Palau Aguilar, of the increase in loans of works to international exhibitions, of having started the works of the new building that will accommodate the new services of Knowledge and Research, of having put the collection online, of having renewed the spaces of security with leading-edge technology,  of having increased the acquisitions of the collection of the museum, of having diversified the offer of activities and with a multi-disciplinary vision, of having actively entered in the social networks or 2.0, of having invited international and national experts to collaborate with the museum.

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14th of December 2009

If you can’t come to the museum, the museum will come to you

Getting closer the users, making the museum more accessible, taking the museum where there are public who can’t visit it, are lines that we are working on to open up. Since the beginning of the year at the Museu Picasso we have started, little by little, but surely, to intensify the relation with other entities and collectives of Barcelona. There are various reasons for this: to establish relations with those closest to us, with those who can add value and with those who need it most.

Today we will talk about the collaboration of the Museum with the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu, internationally recognised for its specialisation in paediatrics. Since October we have held, once a week, a workshop of masks and storytelling based on the works of Picasso.

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3rd of November 2009

How we chose the winners of Become a Fauvist and more about the process of the competition on Flickr.

It’s now three months since 30 July when we threw ourselves into this photo initiative in parallel with the Kees van Dongen exhibition of the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, and last week the short-listed pictures in the Become a Fauvist competition were posted up on Facebook and Flickr. Now, on the blog, we’d like to let you share the sensations of those three months of competition and, above all, show you the winning photos and some of the runners-up.

Become a Fauvist was exciting for us: this was the first interactive experience that we have organized with your help and your contributions. Using Flickr we were able to enjoy this participation to the full, and thanks to your enthusiastic response to the initiative - and taking advantage of the city festivities - extended the competition an extra week to give those of you who still hadn’t snapped the photo you were looking for a little more time.

The jury responsible for selecting the finalists and the winners was made up of the Director of the Museum and the heads of the following departments: Publications, Press and Communication, Photographic Archive and Internet.

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30th of October 2009

Making Museums More Accessible

How can we help blind people see art? Is there a way for people with impaired hearing to hear the power of artistic expression? How can we enable a person with a mental disability get the most out of art? In short, how can we improve access to museums and exhibitions for everyone? These and many more issues were the subject of a very intense Conference Day on 26 October, devoted to learning about and discussing the lines of work and the experiences of art museums to become more accessible. The venue: Gaudi’s building, La Pedrera. The speakers and audience: museum professionals and representatives of various disabled people’s associations.

The findings will be presented at the Museums Workshops: Culture and Best Practices. Accessibility and Inclusion to be held in the Museu Marítim de Barcelona from 4 to 6 November. The following is only a summary of some of the presentations.

A lot of us were looking forward to hearing the speaker from the MoMA, and no one was disappointed. Francesca Rosenberg, Director of Community and Access Programs in the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Education, gave a clear and complete exposition of the many initiatives they are involved in, such as

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