Here is the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya’s programme of exhibitions for 2018, centred around two major exhibitions, international in scope and dimension. These involve collaboration with international museums and the display of themes and artists directly related to the museum’s permanent collection, building bridges and establishing new interpretations with the major international artistic movements.
Exhibitions
William Morris and Company: the Arts and Crafts Movement in Great Britain
The first major exhibition that the museum will present in 2018 is the one dedicated to William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, organized jointly with the Fundació Juan March. It explores this major European artistic movement that was related to Modernisme, one of the mainstays of the museum’s collections.
William Morris, photographied by Emery Walker, c. 1887. Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid
William Morris is one of the most important figures in British arts, letters and culture of the late 19th century. The Arts and Crafts movement emerged in about 1880 and became the dominant trend in British craftsmanship and design until approximately 1914, although its influence survived in some areas until well into the 20th century.
The exhibition presents 300 important pieces of furniture, textiles, wallpaper, jewellery, glassware, ceramics, metalwork, bookbinding, painting, drawing, engraving and photography.
William Morris, Honeysuckle embroidery,1880. Source: William Morris Gallery, London
This is the first time that an exhibition on this subject is to be displayed in our country. In order to do so, the collaboration of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum has been essential. It will be open at the Museu Nacional from 22 February until 2o May 2018.
Gala Salvador Dalí: A Room of her Own in Púbol
Together with The Dalí Foundation, the museum is preparing the first major exhibition dedicated to Gala, a figure essential for understanding the Surrealist universe.
Eric Schaal, Gala working on Dream of Venus. 1939. Eric Schaal © Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2017
Despite her notable popularity, Gala Dalí continues to be an enigma. The exhibition, curated by Estrella de Diego, will discover a Gala who camouflages herself as a muse while forging her own path as an artist: she writes, designs clothes, imagines and creates her own image, besides making herself essential in the artistic development of Dalí.
Salvador Dalí, Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder. c. 1934 © Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2017
The exhibition Gala Salvador Dalí: A Room of her Own in Púbol will present an exceptional series of works by Dalí, as well as different objects that belonged to Gala and a selection of works by other artists. The works come largely from the Gala Salvador Dalí Foundation, as well as from the Dalí Museum in Saint Petersburg (Florida), the Haggerty Museum of Art (Milwaukee), the Pompidou Center (Paris) and other museums and private collections. It can be visited at the Museum from 5 July to 14 October 2018.
Art at the Gates of 1968: Pop and New Artistic Practices in Catalonia
One of the novelties for 2018 will be the start of a series of exhibitions focusing on the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The first of them, Art at the Gates of 1968: Pop and New Artistic Practices in Catalonia, will be a small-format exhibition, the result of the investigations that the museum has carried out in recent years to approach Catalan art in this period in detail.
Norman Narotzky, I Am a Man, 1968-1969
Pacifism, sexual revolution, criticism of capitalism, unlimited exploration of individual creativity, these are some of the fundamental challenges expressed by artists in these years, added to which is the resistance to the specific context of Francoism. The show will portray a moment of tension and enthusiasm that opened the doors to a new sensibility.
Curated by Àlex Mitrani and Inma Prieto, it is planned for November-December 2018.
Changes in the collection
The approach we make of the collection is no longer permanent, but changing. We will add layers of interpretation and will facilitate the generation of different stories so that the visitor chooses and creates its own interpretation.
New Modern Art rooms: the long post-war period and the possibility of the Avant-garde
In 2018 two new galleries dedicated to post-Spanish-civil-war and avant-garde art will be opened, which prolong the historical period covered by the museum to the 1960s.
Ràfols Casamada, The Balcony, 1947
While we await the future enlargement of the museum, these rooms will be a prefiguration of the display of art from the years following the Civil War and they will function as a flexible, experimental exhibition within the permanent collection.
Otho Lloyd, Plaça de Sant Agustí Vell, 1946
Incorporations to the permanent exhibition and new interpretations of the works of Modern Art
The museum proposes to intensify the task of mediation and to incorporate new layers of interpretation in the Modern Art collection, to make it more accessible to different kinds of visitors.
Works by Avant-garde artists will gradually be included, coming from other institutions and private collections. One of the novelties will be the collaboration with the Museu Picasso in Barcelona to strengthen the presence of this artist in the collection.
Museum’s Modern Art galleries. Photo: Marta Mérida
Artist’s projects
Pedro G. Romero. Room
In the rooms dedicated to the Civil War, in the Modern Art collection, the works by Archivo F. X. will be exhibited based on the Psychotechnical Checas by Alphonse Laurencic installed in the churches in Carrers Vallmajor and Saragossa in Barcelona and in the convent of Santa Úrsula in Valencia from 1937 to 1939.
This installation is part of the work done by the artist Pedro G. Romero and it will include documentary material, photographs, films and bibliography to explain its function and meaning.
Psychotechnical Checa by Alphonse Laurencic
Exhibitions outside the museum
The show dedicated to Ramon Pichot, Ramon Pichot: From Els Quatre Gats to the Maison Rose, will travel to CaixaForum in Lleida and CaixaForum in Girona during 2018 thanks to the collaboration in this project of Obra Social “la Caixa”.
Ramon Pichot, Germaine, c. 1900. Artur Ramon Collection
In the second half of 2018 the museum will take a small anthological exhibition of works by Juli González to Brazil. The show will include all his creative periods and registers (metalwork, painting, drawing and sculpture), in order to once again assess this leading figure of the international Avant-garde, the father of modern iron sculpture.
Juli González, Self-portrait, c. 1920-1926
… and you can still visit
The exhibitions Ramon Pichot: From Els Quatre Gats to the Maison Rose, until 21 January 2018, and also Francesc Torres: the Entropic Box [The Museum of Lost Objects], until 14 January.
Don’t miss them!
Related links
Press release (pdf in Spanish – 7Mb)
