2nd of March 2010

The Offering : a surprise donation to the museum

One of the greatest joys of my professional life was when we learned from the Daily Telegraph of 1 May 1984 about the will of the late Lord Amulree. Basil William Sholto Mackenzie, 2nd Baron Amulree, KBE, FRCP (1900-1983), a leading specialist in geriatrics and chronic illness, President of the Society for the Study of Medial Ethics and Liberal Peer and Whip in the House of Lords from 1955 until 1977, had bequeathed a painting by Matisse to the Tate Gallery, a Monet at the National Gallery of Scotland, a Braque to the Israel Museum in Jersusalem and Picasso’s The Offering to the Museu Picasso in Barcelona. It was the English art historian and collector Douglas Cooper (1915-1985) who informed the Museum of Lord Amulree’s wonderful donation and put us in touch with the executors.

Once the legal and tax details had been dealt with, The Offering was shipped to the Museum and presented on 19 November 1985. We on the staff experienced the usual combination of initial surprise and an almost euphoric gratitude felt by any museum receiving a donation, but magnified in this case by our complete lack of personal knowledge of our generous benefactor, the entirely unexpected nature of the legacy and the importance of the work, because the series of drawings and paintings devoted to the subject of the offering is vital to any understanding of the path that led Picasso to the invention of Cubism. This gouache, small in size but very big in significance, and one of the Museum’s most emblematic works, is a paradigm of how Picasso gathered so much from the past and then dynamited it sky high to create his own language. Read more »

21st of January 2010

20 major projects for 2010 in Museu Picasso

We are starting to carry out a number of ambitious projects for this year. It is possible to take this jump forward due to new lines of action and new services (education, activities, research, internet, publics, etc.) that have taken on form and grown at a good pace. There is still a lot to do, in a social, cultural and economic environment that is permanently changing. The museum, thanks to the effort and professionalism of the whole team, continues on its path towards the aim of positioning itself as a centre with a totally consolidated public vocation for generating knowledge around the figure and work of Picasso at an international level, while at the same time closely linked to the social and organisational networks of the city, and activator of processes of creation.

Below is a list of the major projects that we are working on. Some of them starting and to be completed within the year, while others have a longer time scan, and will start and continue a process that will be completed over the next few years, as is the case of the new reasoned catalogue.

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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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21st of December 2009

We’ve finally got the Collection online!!!

After more than two years’ hard work it’s a great pleasure to be able to offer a first online version of the database of the Picasso Museum’s catalogue, with more than two thousand works. Making the collection accessible online was one of the major objectives for 2009.

It is difficult to transmit the muddle of mixed feelings: first of all a high degree of satisfaction (almost emotion!), to finally see tangible results for such an effort put in by the whole team who have collaborated and opened up to the public a thorough knowledge about our collection of the works of Picasso. I will mention just a few of the functionalities that the system presents:

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23rd of November 2009

Protecting Picassos and people

It is well-known that, for the public, security is an unknown and restricted topic. However, as part of the major aim of the Picasso Museum to get close to you, of integrating an online community, we would like to give you the chance of taking a look at everything that is not accessible to the public in general, and therefore to show you how we combine the protection of both art and people in the museum.

A different conception: in search of proximity. Firstly, it should be said that in recent years a change has taken place in terms of the behaviour of the figure of the security guard, in the sense that he or she doesn’t have the exclusive role of carrying out surveillance, but also that of attending the various needs of the public, be it for information or to receive help.

Adapting ourselves to the latest technology: watching from the heart of the museum. Thanks to the commitment of the director and management around 5 months ago, we started up the new Coordination Centre (CECOR), both for security as well as for emergencies. It currently represents one of the most modern centres from among the cultural centres of the country, thanks to the incorporation of the latest technologies of the market. A migration has been undertaken of all the old systems to an IP system (Internet Protocol), and as such everything is now digitalised.

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27th of October 2009

The Sound of Painting

Has it ever occurred to you that we can listen to a painting?

A starting point: Picasso’s 1897 painting Science and Charity. A sound intervention. This is the proposal developed by playwright Victòria Szpunberg and sound engineer Lucas Ariel as part of the programme Seen by… Visions of the Museum’s Collection this October, putting forward a new critical vision and personal appreciation of Picasso and his work. Far removed from conventional readings and art-historical interpretations of the artist, this fresh, unusual, daring, experimental proposal presented itself as the starting point for a possible investigation into the ’sound painting’. It has proved interesting for many reasons.

Szpunberg and Ariel start with a picture from the artist’s early academic period, a religious subject that is perhaps not one of his most outstanding works, and by means of a peripheral figure, an invalid, a model, a woman of little significance in Picasso’s life and work, and establish a narrative discourse in sound.

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6th of October 2009

Some thoughts from the director on the museums of the future

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the current debate surrounding the future of museums.

Of particular interest in this regard is this summer’s debate between the directors of the British Museum and the Tate, Neil MacGregor and Nicholas Serota, and now that the Museu Picasso has just presented the new programme and new lines of action, which are beginning to become a reality, I would like to offer one or two of my own thoughts on the subject.

The museum as a centre of production and space of dialogue. The first thing that is needed is an exercise of self-criticism, in order to move on once and for all from the simplistic conception of the museum as a repository of heritage and offer more heterogeneous and more complex proposals, in keeping with the diversity of today’s public(s). In recent years, society has been evolving increasingly rapidly while museums have changed very little; they have not kept pace, many are still offering cultural products that are too static and rigid.

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29th of July 2009

A very well-spent morning in Provence: a visit to the exhibition and to Picasso’s Château

Yes, it was a wonderful double visit. First, the exhibition Picasso Cézanne at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, and then on to the Château de Vauvenargues where Picasso lived from 1959 to 1961 and installed his personal collection and his studio.

Picasso Cézanne brings together a superb collection of works from museums around the world. It seems to me that the show opens up a very interesting debate, because I think it is an excellent example of an exhibition intended to attract what is called ‘the general public’ and perhaps less likely to appeal to the experts. Let me make it quite clear here that I am no expert on Picasso’s work. My field of “expertise” is communication and the Internet. But after two and a half years working at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, we can perhaps assume that my knowledge of Picasso is a little more extensive than that of the average member of the public, and I think this is explains the two sets of impressions I brought away from my visit to the exhibition Picasso Cézanne.

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10th of July 2009

The Why and the How of the New Presentation of Las Meninas

The return of Las Meninas to the museum after being out on loan for the exhibitions Picasso et les maitres, at the Grand Palais in Paris, and Picasso. Challenging the Past, at the National Gallery in London, together with the important gift of a preliminary drawing of the series, has led the Museum to a new presentation of the series of variations on the great painting by Velázquez that Picasso made between August and December 1957.

Our intention has been to respect the will of the artist and faithfully reflect his creative process. According to his friend and biographer Roland Penrose (Roland Penrose, Picasso. His Life and Work, 3rd e., University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1981, p. 434), Picasso was adamant thet the complete series of 58 paintings be kept together. He resolved not to sell any of them, and in order to ensure this unity he donated the whole series to the Museu Picasso of Barcelona in 1968. Interestengly, the artist left a record of the rhythm at which he was working, dating all of the canvases on the back, and even noting the order of execution on the occasions when he painted more than one on the same day. Read more »