12th of March 2010

In the Museu Picasso we tell stories… with imagination

Last Saturday took place the first “Contes i Tocs” that this Spring Patricia McGill will tell to children and their parents within the museum galleries.

This activity was organised by Marta Iglesias from Public Programmes. I wanted to attend both out of professional interest so as to get to know this new offer for the family public, but also, as a mother, to live this experience with my children.

The participants and Patricia met up in the Pati Finestres of the museum, and that was where the story began. Nice blue coloured monsters with three eyes and one leg, started to spring up in everyone’s imagination, while she made us take hold of a rope, and pulling on it, led us round the rooms of the museum until we reached Las Meninas, where we found more monsters, princesses, cats and dogs, vacuum cleaner-coffee machines, piano-boats, and even the Little Prince and Little Red Riding Hood… The children and their parents added bits to the story and she intertwined the stories while offering a different way of looking at the works of Picasso, based on her words and our imagination, both individually and what we constructed together between us. 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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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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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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1st of September 2009

The Art of Shopping at the Museu Picasso’s Shop

We are all more or less familiar with the French terms marchand and marché de l’art, used to refer to the dealer and his or her relationship with an artist for the promotion and sale of their work, but thanks to the influence of the English word ‘merchandising‘ the term has taken on a new meaning. Our colleagues in the Museu Picasso shop a are good example of this.

More than 330 m2 devoted to art, to Picasso and to the city of Barcelona make up this particular Picassian universe. There is a wide variety of items on sale here, with something for all tastes and all budgets. Marta, Raquel and Manel, who run the Museum shop, and welcome us inside, are real specialists: they visit trade fairs, they explore the shops at other leading museums around the world and, above all, they are experts in the art of merchandising.

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24th of August 2009

How do you look after more than 900,000 visitors a year? Taking care of Visitor Services at the Museu Picasso

With close to million visitors a year, open to the public 10 hours a day, six days a week, plus evening activities, like all good museums the world over the Museu Picasso has a great team working in what tends to be known as ‘visitor services’.

The fact is that a million visitors a year isn’t all that much compared with the more than eight million who visit the Louvre, but our museum has something of a handicap in terms of its physical structure of five medieval palaces, connected to one another. A wonderfully rich historical heritage and an excellent example of secular Catalan Gothic architecture, with some wonderful details, the place is a bit of a maze, and it isn’t easy to guarantee a smoothly flowing itinerary.

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11th of July 2009

5 ideas from “The Museum of the 21st century” talk between Directors of Tate & British

Yesterday in London, Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum and Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, discussed about the Museum of the 21st Century in front of an audience of 500, at the London School of Economics. The event was coorganized with Thames & Hudson. While the announced podcast is not yet available, here are 5 ideas I’ve chosen from the excerpts publishes in Guardian and in Social media and Comunications:

1. Museum’s future lies on the internet: the relationship between institutions and their audiences would be transformed by the internet. Museums would become more like multimedia organizations.
2. The Museum will address audiences across the world and will be a place where people across the world will have a conversation. Those institutions which take up this notion fastest and furthest will be the ones which have the authority in the future.
3. The future has to be the museum as a publisher and broadcaster: there will be a limited number of people working in galleries, and more effectively working as commissioning editors working on material online.
4. The growing challenge will be to look for online capacity and encourage curatorial teams to work there as much as they do in the galleries.
5. In the past, there has been an imperfect communication between visitors and curators. The possibility for a greater level of communication between curators and visitors is the challenge now.

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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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