What should the museum provide: comfort or contemplation? Individual freedom or public decorum? Education or entertainment? These are the questions that Joel Sanders and Diana Fuss pose in the article “Notes from the Museum Bench“. In the midst of the debate on the functions of the museum, redefined at the last ICOM general assembly in…
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Joan Casellas Rrose Sélavy in the Underwater Pyrenees is a performance-talk that was presented “stereoscopically” at the MNAC and in issue number 500 of the magazine L’AVENÇ on 26 March 2023 with an almost magical synchrony. It is a hybrid work that brings together, in a single “communicative bundle”, photography, performance, installation and spoken and…
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Montse Badia Geysers at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya is a curatorial project that brings together four artistic proposals resulting from a research process at this museum. Ro Caminal and Cristina Lucas will present the results of this research in 2022 and Raquel Friera and Núria Güell will do so in the course of 2023. Performative conference…
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Montse Frisach In recent years, archives have taken on a predominant role in contemporary artistic practices. Many artists often work with archive materials or even with the idea of the archive as the central argument of their works. Furthermore, museums and artistic institutions have also become aware that their archives should not just be simple…
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Raúl Gimeno and Sandra Herrera Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley in Salomé: a tragedy in one act (1894). Source: Joaquim Folch i Torres Library Ah! I have kissed thy mouth, Iokanaan. I have kissed thy mouth. There was a bitter taste on thy lips Oscar Wilde Within the collection of the Joaquim Folch i Torres Library…
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The restoration that sheds light on a work affected by the passage of time. Front and back of the Christ and the cross prior to restoration. Photograph by Jordi Calveras. In the post published on 10 June last year reference was made to the many earlier restorations prior to the admission of the Christ and…
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Eduard Vallès 18 November 1939. Camp de la Bota, Barcelona At a quarter to six in the morning Lluís Serra Giribert (Manresa, 1903 – Barcelona, 1939) was executed by firing squad at Camp de la Bota. He was 36. Born in Manresa, he was adopted by a well-to-do family in Horta de Sant Joan (Terra…
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Ro Caminal In the Presence of the Lord, Francesc Masriera, 1891 Looking necessarily means making use of our cultural, socioeconomic and personal heritage to see. The look acts as a technology that disciplines us when interpreting what we see. The spectator, in the first instance, cannot look stripped of that burden that conditions what they…
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Juliette Raussin From the museum as a temple to the museum as an actor in its present For the last five months I have had the privilege of being part of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya’s Department of Museography in the framework of a curricular internship. This experience has been enriching in many ways…
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Francesc Quílez and Aleix Roig Images of the exhibition. Photo: Marta Mérida The exhibition The Heartbeat of Nature has been put together from the different elements arising from the artist’s relationship with nature. The connecting thread is work on paper, present in the six sections of the exhibition, in which the nearly 80 pieces are…
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