22nd of July 2010

Picasso’s Cadaqués

This July sees the opening in the Museu de Cadaqués of the exhibition “Picasso’s Cadaqués: the Centenary of Pablo Picasso’s Stay in Cadaqués 1910-2010″. Curated by Pere Vehí and Ricard Mas, the show boasts an impressive selection of photographs, drawings and oil paintings by artists associated with the little town of Cadaqués. Read more »

7th of July 2010

The fleeting puzzle of Picasso’s The Embrace. The story of a discovery

The history of this discovery has two dates, 2004 and 2010. In the summer of 2004, during a visit to the Diocesan Museum in Barcelona to see the exhibition “Els 4 Gats. From Casas to Picasso”, I first saw a very unusual drawing by Picasso, on loan from a private collection. The work was presented as if it were complete and was in the form of a vertical strip, long and narrow (59 x 12.6 cm), on which only a building and a carriage could be discerned. The medium was pastel, in vibrant tones. Surprising and little known as the work was, there could be no doubt it was a picasso. Read more »

22nd of June 2010

“Picasso Looks at Degas” opens in the USA: this autumn, the only European headquarters in the Museu Picasso Barcelona!

On 12 June the museum of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute inaugurated the American phase of the exhibition “Picasso Looks at Degas“, which will have its unique presentation in the European Museu Picasso from 14 October.

The Clark Institute is a highly prestigious museum and centre for research in the history of art in Williamstown (Massachusetts), in the heart of New England. Just a couple of hours north of New York City, the town hosts a wealth of cultural activities during the summer, and the opening, part of the annual Summer Gala, brought together over 300 people in the Clark’s lovely gardens. 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 »

11th of June 2010

The Cannibal Gaze: Picasso swallows up Rusiñol

Would you like to know the story behind the current exhibition at the Museu Picasso? The show’s curator reveals some of the choices and decisions in the process of conceptualizing and staging the exhibition Picasso vs. Rusiñol.

The exhibition narrative

The idea of this exhibition is to establish a discourse on the relationship between Picasso and the leading exponent of Catalan art when Picasso was living in Barcelona, Santiago Rusiñol. Although Picasso’s links to Catalan art are well known, very little has been written specifically about the relations between the two men, a circumstance which made a considerable amount of original research necessary. Read more »

1st of June 2010

This year, 2010, is a year of great exhibitions about Picasso’s work!

Throughout 2010 exhibitions about the work of Picasso are taking place around the world; this is a great year for anyone interested in his work.

At present, apart from the temporary exhibition that just opened at the Picasso Museum on the relationship between Picasso and Santiago Rusiñol, the exhibition “Picasso: Peace and Freedom”, on art and politics in Picasso’s work at the Tate Liverpool can be seen, among others. An exhibition on Picasso and the horse has also recently been inaugurated at the Picasso Museum of Málaga, and since last month a major exhibition of the complete collection of Picasso’s work from the museum’s collection has been opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In this same city, an exhibition of Picasso’s engravings can also be seen at the MoMA. Read more »

26th of March 2010

The unseen work involved in putting on an exhibition

Our latest exhibition, Secret Images. Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints, has been awarded the ACCA Catalan Art Critics’ Association prize in the Historical Research Exhibitions category. The ACCA 2009 Awards ceremony was held on March 23 in the MACBA, where the prize was received by the Museum’s Director, Pepe Serra, and the two curators, Ricard Bru and Malén Gual. This award represents a much-appreciated recognition of our work and a stimulus to undertake further research along similar lines. We almost feel as if we were dreaming. Not only have we learned a lot and had great fun working on this project, but the exhibition has had a very positive reception from critics and public alike and now we have won the prestigious ACCA Prize, which we have collected so excited. Read more »

3rd of February 2010

Current Art Takes its Place in the Museum

This January I joined the Museu Picasso to take over the running of Public Programmes, the department responsible for cultural and educational services and the web. I’m really excited about joining the team here at a time when the Museum is so full of energy and plans for the future, and it’s very rewarding to know we are contributing to its evolution through our knowledge, imagination and work. I’ll be keeping you up to date on developments in the department and the work of the team.

I want to tell you now about one of the first activities I’ve been involved in here, the collaboration between the MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona) and the Museu Picasso in relation to the retrospective exhibition of work by Canadian artist Rodney Graham at the MACBA.

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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

Art exhibitions, a plural work

Monday 30th November was the culmination of the course, “History of exhibitions. Beyond the ideology of the white cube”, that began at the Macba on 19^th October, and that two of us, the technical staff of the Museu Picasso, have followed.

One of the aims of the course was to take a trip through the history of exhibitions, more than just that of singular works of art. Based on the definition of an exhibition as “a perceptive disposition in itself, a machine for seeing, and an act of learning”, artists, critics and curators, have reflected on seven exhibitions from the second half of the 20^th century that marked a change in the way of presenting works of art within a space, and therefore the way of looking at them.

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