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 »

9th June 2011

Picasso’s Eye

Who was Picasso the man? What did those round, expectant, avid eyes of his pursue, moment by moment? What did they draw in, those eyes? The silhouette of the sensuous bareback rider Rosita de Oro? The drinking sessions with Casagemas and company? The humanity of his friend Grock the clown?

Circus Sundays. Photo: Jordi Mota

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22nd March 2011

Some True Stories from the Museu Picasso

‘Can we see Picasso’s Mona Lisa?’ ‘Don’t you have any colour postcards of Guernica?’ Unlikely as they may seem, these are some of the odd questions and curious situations that confront the Museum staff from time to time. In its almost 50 years of existence the Museu Picasso has built up a rich stock of good stories — often funny, sometimes surprising and on occasion touching. Here are some of the anecdotes that have become abiding favourites among the Museum’s gallery staff.

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14th March 2011

Museums are going mobile /1

In a relatively short time the museums have entered the Internet, created websites, digitised the collections, and entered the social networks. Do we expect even more movements? some of you may be asking. Well the answer is clearly yes. As society changes so the museums also have to adapt if we want to keep and attract new users, either in person or online.

A visitor using the iPad in our exhibition rooms during explanations by Nina Simon. | Image of the iPhone app from the LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) | Presentation of the application about the works of Botticelli within Art, Internet and New Media in Florence. Photos: Conxa Rodà, 2010.

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28th January 2011

Checking out the route of lost objects

Museums are used to being highly visited spaces (or at least it would be good that they were).  Through their galleries and corridors pass tens, hundreds or even thousands of people every day.  This continual traffic can lead to the fact of personal belongings being lost or left behind is very common in museums, and the Museu Picasso is no exception.  Would you like to know how the lost objects are dealt with in our museum?  What do the visitors leave behind? Read more »

1st December 2010

Museums face the challenge of the global audience

The conference Museums and the Web, which we have talked about on a number of occasions, is a privileged platform on which to discuss the use of the Internet and the new technologies in publicizing museums and their collections. The Museu Picasso took part in the conference for the first time in 2008, when we presented our new website, and since 2009 we have had a place on the International Program Committee. Thanks to this connection, we recently welcomed to the Museum two of the conference directors, David Bearman and Jennifer Trant, who came to give a talk on ‘Reaching a Global Audience. Engaging the Local Visitor’. This session, along with the talk and workshop given here by Nina Simon just a few days earlier, afforded museum professionals in Catalonia a wide-ranging first-hand vision of the most innovative developments worldwide in the field of participation and museums 2.0. Read more »

15th November 2010

e-interview with Nina Simon by Museu Picasso

I first met Nina in Indianapolis at the Museums and the Web 2009 Conference, but I had been reading her instructive and witty blog, MuseumTwo, for quite a long time then. Precisely for her blog she won an Award at the MW09 Best of the Web. As we have been disseminating, we are happy to welcome Nina at our museum, where she’ll give a talk on Wednesday 17th November 2010.

Nina just published her first book a few months ago, The Participatory Museum. You can read a review on a recent post we wrote. I had the opportunity to interview Nina as a prologue to her coming to Barcelona. Here you are: Read more »

5th November 2010

How can we make museums more participatory? Nina Simon provides a lot of ideas in her book The Participatory Museum

To get us nicely warmed up before the lecture that Nina Simon will give at the Museu Picasso on Wednesday 17 November, we offer you a review of her widely acclaimed book.

The concept of public participation is associated above all these days with the track opened up by social media. And it’s true that the social networks provide endless options to share, comment, recommend, co-create and, in short, participate so easily and so immediately that we’re still getting used to. But the idea of participation goes far beyond the Web 2.0. The museum visitor, now accustomed to being an agent in the virtual environment must also be offered channels of expression and participation in the physical environment of the museum. Read more »

7th October 2010

Presentation of the 2010-1011 Programme: a lot of work done and a lot still to do!

This week we presented our programme for the 2010-2011 season, which we are particularly pleased with because it embodies the results of the Museum’s evolution and the main objectives we set ourselves three years ago:

• To promote research and knowledge from the Museum itself as a basis on which to undertake projects;

• To continue to review Picassian narratives and the critical reception of the artist’s work in the area of Barcelona and Spanish.

This programme is a proposal of greater complexity than in previous years, and most of the projects have been generated in-house with the aim of continue to make the Museum a space for debate and participation. Read more »

12th August 2010

The visitors of Paris museums in images

Like the photo blog about their visitors that came out about the museums of New York, today we dedicate one to the visitors of the museums of Paris, taking advantage of the participation in the Rencontres Web-Musées, which we also write about on the blog. The truth is, a certain amount of time has gone by, and there are so many things to talk about on this blog, that it has stayed on our to-do list. Now that the time for holidays has come, to take and look at photos, we would like to share it with you. Read more »