One of the best photographers in the history of photography in Catalonia, Joan Colom, passed away this week. Without doubt, a leading figure within the collection of photography of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Accountant by profession, he was self-trained and joined the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya in 1957. Taking photos with his Leica…
Read more
Cristina Sanjust Every quarter, the Amics del Museu Nacional take a trip to know better the Catalan heritage: “The museum’s walks”. The last one took them to discover the Solsonès baroque legacy. Cristina Sanjust was their guide and now she explains to us her experience of this visit from the inside. As a tourist guide…
Read more
Jordi Casanovas Surprisingly, once the Jewish cemetery had disappeared as a legal entity, and after intensive reuse of its gravestones as building material, the presence of large blocks with Hebrew inscriptions on them in one part of the mountain of Montjuïc still caught the attention of many people who were walking around it. Hence the…
Read more
If there is one thing that the museums of Catalonia are noted for it is being the result, not of ancient royal collections, as is the case with the Belgian royal museums, or, closer to home, the Prado Museum, but of private collections that have been purchased, bequeathed, donated or ceded to the Museums Board…
Read more
Albert Estrada-Rius Events are a good pretext to commemorate historic events or to remember forgotten characters. This year we are celebrating 550 years of the death of an infant from the royal household of Portugal, called Peter, who ended up reigning in Catalonia between 1464 and 1466 with the name of Peter IV. The context…
Read more
Conxa Rodà We talked in a previous post of the tour that the Museu Nacional was invited to do by Museums and the Web to three Chinese cities and we commented on the characteristics and challenges of the museums there. Today we’ll share content extracted from the lectures and show the museums we visited. Talks and…
Read more
Artur Ramon If we enter the Oval Hall – a huge ballroom without an orchestra – and go up to the next floor we come to the recently redesigned Modern Art collections. Here the discourse is both thematic and chronological. The MNAC is a museum of museums, like a Russian matryoshka doll. It is also…
Read more
Pablo Gargallo’s sculpture The Violinist is suffering serious deterioration due to the incompatibility of the materials with which it is made: a wood armature covered with lead. For this reason, the Friends of the Museu Nacional have started a crowdfunding campaign Lets Save theViolinist. Conservator Àlex Masalles explains the details of the sculpture, the study…
Read more
Artur Ramon Whenever I accompany a foreign friend to the Museu Nacional I try to follow a chronological path in order to help him or her to grasp the magnitude of the collections in an orderly manner. I start with the Romanesque Art section and its “Sistine Chapel”, the misnamed Pantocrator by the Master of…
Read more
Conxa Rodà The Museu Nacional has collaborated with the Johns Hopkins University of Washington to host in Barcelona, in January 2016, an onsite seminar within its Online Master of Arts in Museum Studies, as we had already done in 2012. Entitled Museums in Changing Times, the academic programme, of two weeks’ duration, was made up…
Read more
