Love at First Sight: how we select the catalogue’s cover

Imagine you’re browsing among the art catalogues in a bookshop, without looking for anything in particular. The first thing that strikes you about all of the books there — from a distance, even before you can read the titles — is the colourful covers. Reproductions of famous paintings, intriguing details, familiar styles, indecipherable typefaces… you stroll over to a table next to the shelves and pick up a catalogue. Could you say just what it was that attracted you to it? What made you go for this one rather than some other? If the cover had been different, would have you have looked inside it anyway? And when you did open it, was the interest that the cover aroused in you confirmed by the contents, or were you disappointed?

We tend to think that in the case of an art catalogue, like any other book, the cover is the bait dangled in front of the reader, the siren song we hope will entrance you. Choosing one design over another is not simply a matter of taste. The decision is made according to what we want to say to you, what part of the content we want to focus on, what we believe will attract your attention. Read more »

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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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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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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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