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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16th of November 2009

The Digital Museu Picasso in the World

Two notable activities have recently come along to assist the growth of the Museum’s Internet project. First of all, the Museu Picasso has been invited, for the second year running, to take a place on the International Program Committee of the worldwide conference on Museums & the Web and take part in the evaluation and selection of the proposed papers, forums and workshops. The forthcoming conference will be held in Denver, Colorado, and the committee includes representatives of such prestigious institutions as the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Walker Art Center and the Museum Studies Programme at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, with the Museu Picasso the only Spanish art centre on the committee. Visit the Museums 2.0 blog for a detailed account of the 2009 conference.

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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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22nd of October 2009

Museums and Social Networks: an Encounter at the Louvre

The recent get-together in Paris as part of the ‘Rencontres Web Musées’, on 16 October, was in the purest spirit of 2.0: informal and participatory and with plenty of substance supplied not only by the panel but by many of the delegates. The setting, the Louvre. The subject: Museums and Web 2.0. The content: let me give you a brief overview, and you can check out the presentations on Slideshare.

I could see that as far as 2.0 is concerned the museums in France are more or less where we are here, just starting to explore and discover the immense possibilities of communication and content generation that the social networks make available to us all, but a few French museums are at the cutting edge: of note here are the 2.0 experiences of the Muséum and the Abattoirs, both in Toulouse - the first science, the second contemporary art - or the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon. In Paris itself it seems that the major museums haven’t really got started yet, but museums are already showing a lot of interest, and the very fact of holding the 2.0 encounter at the Louvre is a good sign. I have a hunch that within six months or a year at the outside action on the social networks will have been integrated into most centres’ communication strategy. Their potential is much too good to miss, and the breakneck speed at which they’re expanding means that you can’t just sit there open-mouthed in wonderment if you want to really get on board. It’s not at all about following a trend, it’s about being present wherever the users are, talking to people and exchanging views in a multi-directional way, with communication being not only from the museum to the public, as in the past, but from everyone to the museum and from everyone to everyone.

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7th of October 2009

‘Become a Fauvist’: The Voting Has Started

The big day is here! Are you ready to vote for your favourite photo? A little more than two months after the announcement of the Museum’s ‘Become a Fauvist’ competition, organized by our official Flickr community group to coincide with the Kees van Dongen exhibition, the time has come to start the vote.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support and participation, because we’re delighted to say that your response to the competition was extraordinary - so extraordinary that we had to extend it by an extra week! You sent in almost 300 photos to our first-ever competition on Flickr, with the theme of ‘Become a Fauvist’. The basic idea was that the colours should be the dominant element in the photograph, and that you should experiment, using your imagination and creativity to pay a small personal tribute to Fauve art.

In the first place, we want to congratulate all of you who took part - the quality of your pictures deserves the highest praise, as you can see below:

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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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8th of September 2009

Only a few weeks left to Become a Fauvist in the Museu Picasso competition on Flickr

October 4 is the new closing date for sending in your photos to the competition we are organizing on Flickr, the photography social network that lets you share pictures with other internet users. Specifically, we are looking for images in which the emphasis is on colour, and inviting you to send in up to a maximum of 5 photos, inspired by the art of the Fauves, to coincide with the current exhibition of work by the Dutch artist Kees van Dongen at the Museu Picasso.

So far quite a number of ‘Fauvist’ artists have been inspired to take part in this latest initiative launched by the Museum. To date the group boasts more than 70 participants from around the world, ranging from Catalonia to Germany to Japan and the USA, who together have submitted over 200 snapshots: colours, colours and more colours, in dazzling contrast, embracing the most original and diverse moments and motifs, in the form of landscapes, travel photos, abstract art… there are no limits! These are just a taster.

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10th of August 2009

Want to join our community? The Museu Picasso in Barcelona welcomes you

Participation on the Internet is now synonymous with 2.0: any company or institution nowadays that wants its Internet project to be participatory will obviously make sure to incorporate the tools that social networks make available. In the same way that virtually no museum today is in any doubt about whether or not it needs a website, a presence on the social networks is a natural addition to the active and activating presence on the Internet.

Museums around the world are slowly but inexorably coming into the fold. Those in the U.S. are doing so with real energy (the Brooklyn, MoMA, Metropolitan or Smithsonian are excellent examples), those in Europe, more cautiously (with the notable exception of the UK, especially the Tate, National Gallery or Victoria & Albert). In this country we are among the more timid, but still there are some interesting upcoming initiatives, such as the Guggenheim Bilbao’s WikiDocentes, the Facebook profiles of the Prado, Reina Sofía and Fundació Miró and Youtube profiles such as the MNACTEC_Museu Ciència i Tècnica de Catalunya).

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