10th May 2012

What do we know about the Museu Picasso visitors?

The museum now knows a little more about its visitors after carrying out a one-year museum marketing study and conducting 2,102 situational interviews.
The study is based on the following sections:

• Quality measurement, differentiating between expectations prior to the visit and the quality perceived after the visit.
• Visitor profile, in order to see the type of people who visit the museum (gender, age, nationality, residence, education and career).
• Visiting habits, determining the frequency of visits, the reasons, time of stay and the composition of the visiting group.

Visitors in the museum rooms Read more »

27th February 2012

The Museu Picasso Goes Mobile

On occasion of this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google has selected a number of points of interest around the city, offering them the opportunity to take part in the ‘Barcelona Go Mobile’ initiative and mobilising their webs.

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24th February 2012

The history of Barcelona as told by the medieval courtyards of the Museu Picasso

One of the first tasks undertaken by the Centre for Knowledge and Research, soon after it was founded in 2009, was to ask the firm of Veclus, s.l. to carry out an architectural history study of the five palaces on carrer Moncada that are the current home of the Museu Picasso.

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10th February 2012

Farewell to the Picasso with photos of visitors

After more than five years at the Museu Picasso, working on a wide range of projects, but especially on matters relating to the web and social networks, it feels strange to be writing a last post here. Anyway, I thought that a good way to say goodbye would be to publish a selection of my photos of members of the public looking at works by Picasso in museums around the world. In any museum, one of the most interesting things to look at — alongside the works on show and the design and layout of the museum itself — is the public. Some time ago I started a series of albums on Flickr of the museum public: visitors looking, taking photos, talking, teaching, enjoying, interacting, reading, exploring, copying, listening, sharing and more bring to light the many forms and shades of experience in museums. And we still need to do even more to enhance the quality of this visitor experience, making it richer and more diverse.

Atlanta Museum of Art 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 »

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 »