12th of August 2010

The visitors of Paris’s museums in images

Like the photo blog about their visitors that came out about the museums of New York, today we dedicate one to the visitors of the museums of Paris, taking advantage of the participation in the Rencontres Web-Musées, which we also write about on the blog. The truth is, a certain amount of time has gone by, and there are so many things to talk about on this blog, that it has stayed on our to-do list. Now that the time for holidays has come, to take and look at photos, we would like to share it with you. Read more »

28th of June 2010

The students ‘open up’ Las Meninas! Joint Venture between the Escola Deià and the Museu Picasso

On Thursday, 17 June the Museu Picasso hosted the presentation of the book LAS MENINAS # SÈRIE OBERTA, the result of collaborative venture between the Museum and the Escola d’Art i Superior de Disseny Deià. The story begins with an invitation to the city’s art schools with the aim of opening the doors of the Museum and generating dialogues with young design students, encouraging them to take a fresh and freely critical look at the institution.

The Escola Deià, which specializes in interior design and ephemeral architecture, centred the project on the exhibition concept, with a particular focus on the series Las Meninas, one of the most important works in the Museum’s collection. Read more »

9th of April 2010

Museums as part of society - and vice versa

As head of the Visitor Services department I have just spent three days visiting some of the most famous museums in the city of London - the British Museum, the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.

In all of these museums I had the pleasure of meeting the heads of the various departments responsible for visitor services and of discussing with them issues to do with guided tours, audio guides, activities, accessibility, complaints, signage and tour management, including others.

Like the vast majority of cultural institutions in Britain, these museums believe that art and culture are not a luxury but a part of the DNA of a country or city and, as such, a necessity. 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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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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16th of November 2009

Doctoral Thesis on Picasso’s Iconography

On Monday, November 9, the doctoral thesis ‘Picasso’s Iconography between 1905 and 1907. The Influence of Pompeian Painting’ by Conchita Boncompte, and supervised by Dr. Lourdes Cirlot, was read at the Universitat de Barcelona.

The thesis sets out to demonstrate the influence of Pompeian painting on the work Picasso produced between 1905 and 1907, an influence that was supported by and engaged in dialogue with Picasso’s milieu and his experience of Catalan Romanesque from his stay in Gósol. The highly stimulating presentation of this study, which runs to more than 700 pages, and promises to open up new avenues of research, has already prompted many to wish that it be made accessible to a wider readership.

It would be an impossible task to summarize here the wealth of research and visual information put forward in the session, and we have therefore asked the author herself to give us a brief extract:

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12th of June 2009

The Explosion of Colour: Van Dongen in Barcelona

Lovers of Fauvism and of art in general will want to visit the Museu Picasso in Barcelona for the first ever retrospective in Spain of the work of Kees van Dongen (Rotterdam, 1877 - Monaco, 1968), which offers a whole new perspective on the artist thanks to the findings of important recent research, and presents a number of hitherto all-but-unknow works.

This retrospective, opened from 11 June to September 2009, co-produced by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco and the Museu Picasso de Barcelona and curated by Jean-Michael Bouhours, former curator of the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco and currently director of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Pepe Serra, director of the Museu Picasso, brings together almost 80 works by Van Dongen and four by Picasso, as testimony to the relationship between the two artists.

Photo of Fernande Olivier. Caption: One of the points of contact between Van Dongen and Picasso was a woman: Fernande Olivier, Picasso’s companion, who modelled for both artists.

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27th of May 2009

Museu Picasso 2.0: A space for conversation

Welcome to the Museu Picasso de Barcelona, and welcome to the blog!

Our and your museum is the result of Picasso’s desire to leave something of himself to the city of Barcelona, where he served his apprenticeship and spent several extended stays. We are proud to say that the people of Barcelona have a truly exceptional museum, created by the artist’s express wish. The Museu Picasso in Barcelona is undoubtedly the centre of reference for understanding Pablo Picasso’s formative years up to his Blue Period. The collection then makes a chronological leap forward to 1917, when the artist returned to the city, and then again to 1957, with the complete series of Las Meninas.

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