31st January 2012

Farewell to Pepe Serra: assessment of a phase

When our director Pepe Serra said goodbye to the team at the Museu Picasso he told us: ‘We have done ten years’ work in five years.’ What follows is a brief summary of some of the projects carried out during his time as director.

· Research and development of exhibitions that contribute knowledge and added value.

“Feasting on Paris. Picasso 1900-1907” (2011). Self-Portrait with Palette, Picasso, Paris, 1906 |  “Picasso Looks at Degas” (2010). Read more »

20th July 2011

“Feasting on Paris. Picasso 1900-1907″. An exhibition readily accessible to all

Here at the Museu Picasso we have at last got round to tackling a very important pending aspect of accessibility: accessibility of communication. We have long been aware of the need to make accessible to everyone not just the physical space of the museum but also our content, and had marked it out as a priority, as we noted in a previous post.

Preparation of the exhibition “Feasting on Paris. Picasso 1900-1907” gave us the perfect opportunity to incorporate communication accessibility measures and implement these in the exhibition process. In this task we have benefitted from the invaluable input of Barcelona’s Institut de Cultura (ICUB), guiding us through the process and providing support at each step. For some time now the ICUB has been providing the city’s museums with the tools they need to improve in this facet of communication in general, and especially in the production of temporary exhibitions. Read more »

3rd February 2011

The Museum on Monday

So you think there’s no one in the Museum on a Monday?
Far from it! Monday is one of our busiest days of the week: the offices are full of people and in the exhibition rooms they’re working flat out to get everything ready for the new week. Take a look!

17th June 2010

Santiago Rusiñol’s The Prodigal Puppet

A painter, playwright, musician, storyteller and one of the supreme exponents of Modernista bohemianism, Santiago Rusiñol was the author of such emblematic plays for the Catalan stage as L’auca del senyor Esteve, L’hèroe, Els savis de Vilatrista and L’alegria que passa. Read more »

12th March 2010

In the Picasso Museu 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 »

18th 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.

Read more »

14th December 2009

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.

Read more »

27th 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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21st May 2009

The night of the Picasso

Saturday, 16 May saw the latest Night of Museums, an initiative promoted by the Council of Europe, which for the last five years has provided us with the exceptional opportunity to discover and visit more than 2,000 museums all over Europe between 7.00 p.m. and 1 a.m.

In Barcelona 27 different museums took part, with audio-visuals, cinema, concerts, perfomance art, guided visits, readings… on a Saturday night… and for free!

Who goes to a museum at night? Who caught that cultural Saturday Night Fever? Here is our report on The Night of the Picasso.

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