Toni Mata
Heaven or hell?
We were just a few more than twenty and each of us had a small stone from the beginning of the visit that we had to keep until the end. The fate of what we didn’t know very well depended on our fidelity to the game proposed by Natalia and Martí. For a long hour, we made use of our right to decide on several occasions, choosing A or B in front of a picture or a sculpture until, at the last stop, the couple took out household scales. Ospa! Now we can understand the whim of the little balls. One by one, we filled the two dishes to see which one weighed more: the red ones on one side and the blue ones on the other. Who do you think won, heaven or hell?
Artistic adventures at Museu Nacional
Twelve months of experiences inside and outside the museum
The setting is any Saturday from 2018 which gifted infinite experiences to the Friends of the Museu Nacional. From the trips to Flanders, Scotland and Tuscany, to the day trips of the country to get to know the Empordà of Gala and Dalí, the Mont-roig del Camp of Miró, the Lleida of contemporary art, and the countryside of Tarragona of Jujol. Instructive trips and, at the same time, pleasurable, such as the tours around Barcelona to get to know the inside of the Casa Vicens by Gaudí and the Palau de la Música by Domènech i Montaner, the new galleries of the neighbourhood of Sant Pere and all those wonders we discover in the centre of the Catalan capital when we look upwards.
We experienced all of this and much more over the past twelve months following the traces of art and culture throughout the city, the geography of Catalonia and the European continent. But within the Palau Nacional surprises and emotions have also been revealed. And remembering 2018 you cannot forget, of course, the Artistic Adventures that invited us to approach museum collections from an innovative point of view. As if we were penetrating those books of blue and red covers with the introductory heading ‘Choose your adventure’, each term we were immersed in the many stories that the two people ‘guilty’ of the idea proposed to us. A fun mechanic: after each explanation of a work of art, a dilemma and a vote was posed, the responsibility of deciding the route was in our hands. Paths of an uncertain horizon that could end in an unexpected way, such as weighing small stones on a balance to resolve whether the route through the Romanesque rooms sent us directly to the clear blue of the sky or the intense red of hell.
Artistic adventures at Museu Nacional
What happens inside the museum when you look at it with other eyes? The same thing experienced by the visitor who arrives there for the first time: a whole universe of details that never end and unfold before you, forcing you to come back again and again. On an altarpiece, an oil painting, a capital or a bust thousands of stories can be accommodated, such as those explained in the visit: Ius arte, which has sought elements from the legal world in the collections of the centre.
The Ius arte visit
Three thousand!
During the last edition of the Night of the Friends, before listening to a recital by the pianist Evgeny Konnov, the president informed us that we had reached 3,000 members. Three thousand! An active community that powerfully contributes to increasing and spreading the collections of the Museu Nacional. And I often think: I don’t know all of them! But I know there’ll always be there when I need them. What the interests and concerns of each of them are, is a mystery…what would friendship be without secrets to discover?
The Night of the Friends 2018
Ah, and by the way, heaven won, of course.
Related links
Being a friend of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, the story of a friendship
Friends of the Museu Nacional Foundation
