In this OnCulture Special we will try to help the cultural traveller to sort things out. We have selected the 50 best and hottest art exhibitions on display in twenty museums, from the end of the summer of 2009 and for the following twelve months or so.
From archaeology to architecture, from modern art to the Renaissance, and from ethnography to history, Barcelona’s museums have it all. We have designed this museum itinerary especially for the “cultural traveller”, hoping that those recognising themselves behind that label will appreciate it.
Have a good stay in Barcelona…
The Maritime Museum is a good place to start your cultural itinerary in the city. Until September 6 you can visit the Tutankhamon travelling exhibition (see editor’s picks below) that attracts hundreds of visitors since it was opened on June 6. Also until September 6, see the exhibition The Maritime in bombs, which will transfer you seventy years back, during the difficult period of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), through material and documents from its Archives.
In a nearby hall and until October 25, visit the show Transition times: 1975-1982, which examines the democratic transition in Spain, offering a timeline that begins with the death of the general Franco and ends with the democratic elections of October 1982.
From mid-September until the end of October, you should also visit the museum’s Hall of the Medieval Ships, which host the exhibition Vaya Valla, offering a journey through fifty years of the Cuban Revolution. The show is realized in collaboration with the Casa Amèrica de Catalunya.
The museum is open all days of the week (10am-10pm) and admission is € 6.50 (conc. 50% off). For info call +34-93-3429920 or send e-mail.
If archaeology is your cup of tea, then don’t miss out the Faces of Rome exhibition at the Archaeology Museum in Barcelona until September 13 (see editor’s picks below).
A double photography exhibition of works by Robert Capa and Gerda Taro can be seen at the MNAC (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya) until September 27 (see editor’s picks below), while at nearby halls of the Palau Nacional do not miss the opportunity to see another archaological exhibition, The Iberians, Culture and Currency, which runs until May 2, 2010, and presents coins minted by the Iberians as a magnificent testament to the history of these peoples, who developed one of the most important cultures in the peninsula, from the sixth century BC to the first century AD. The coins are displayed together with other objects produced by this ancient people.
You can visit the MNAC from 10am to 7pm (until 2.30pm on Sundays and closed on Mondays); admission is € 8.50 and includes all the exhibitions on display plus an audioguide. For more info call +34-93-6220376 or send e-mail.
The ancient world is the theme of yet one more exhibition that can be visited until September 30. Sick skeletons. A vision of the disease over time at the Museu Egipci de Barcelona brings together for the first time in Spain 136 unpublished pieces from national and international collections to demonstrate the wide range of diseases suffered by our ancestors. The exhibition was curated by specialists in paleo-pathology.
Visit the museum from 10am to 8pm (until 2pm on Sundays) with € 11.00 general admission (€ 8.00 concessions). For more info call +34-93-4880188 or e-mail.
But since you are in Barcelona, modern art is more likely to have won your heart. In that case, go to the Picasso Museum which presents an amazing Kees Van Dongen show until September 27 (see editor’s picks). By year’s end, from November 5 to February 14, 2010, the museum hosts a much expected sexy show: Picasso. Erotic prints features a selection of prints with erotic themes, made by Picasso between 1964 and 1970. These are presented in dialogue with 19th-century Japanese shunga prints, used to describe the female nude and explore male desire and the sexual act.
The Picasso Museum can be visited from 10am to 8pm (except Mondays) and admission is € 5.80 for the temporary show and € 9.00 for a combined visit to the permanent exhibition. For more info call +34-93-2563000 or send e-mail.
A visit to the Joan Miró Museum in on top of the list of all well prepared cultural travellers who respect themselves. If you made it to Barcelona for this, you can take the long waits in queues in order to see the famous works in the Foundation’s collections. When you finally get in, give some extra time to visit some of the museum’s temporary shows. The talk of the town this summer is of course Miró–Dupin. Art and Poetry, which runs until October 10 (see editor’s picks below). But what follows it is no less important.
From November 29, 2009 to January 24, 2010, the Foundation presents the first retrospective in Spain of František Kupka. The Czech artist’s exhibition will show a selection of around 80 paintings and drawings, all from the Centre Georges Pompidou, and documents from the collection of Pierre Brullé, a leading expert on Kupka, who was considered the first painter to explore the concept of abstract act.
On February 19 the exhibition Murals will amaze art lovers with the colourful works by the Soninke women from Mauritania and the spotted red clay of Thai artist Sakari Krue-On. In the Olive-tree patio, visitors will admire the vertical garden of Jerónimo Hagerman, which will be also visible from inside the halls hosting a street art show: graffiti from the hands of UTRCrew from Bosnia-Herzegovina and by artists from Singapore. All this until May 23, 2010.
Last but not least, the Swiss videoartist Pipilotti Rist, winner of the 2009 Joan Miró Prize, is presenting in the summer of 2010 (June 18 to October 31) her solo exhibition (another one will be presented at the Centre Cultural Caixa Girona–Fontana d’Or in Girona).
Visit the museum from 10am to 8pm (until 9.30pm on Thursday and until 2.30pm on Sunday, closed on Monday); admission is € 8.00 (adults) and there is a € 6.00 concession and a 50% off for a visit to a temporary exhibition only. For more info call +34-93-4439470 or e-mail.
Another must-visit venue is the CCCB (Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona). Free of rigid thematic constraints, the CCCB conceives exhibitions that are more than just compilations of works. Its first summer exhibition Gangs of the 80s: Cinema, press and the streets comes to a close on September 6 so if you’re in Barcelona do visit it. The show offers a view of juvenile delinquency cinema, which peaked between 1978 and 1985, focusing on its relationship of retro-feeding with the press of the time.
Until October 18, you also have time to see CCCB’s The Jazz Century exhibition, which is an absolute must if you’re a lover of the genre (see editor’s picks below).
From October 20 to February 21, 2010, the CCCB presents Cerdà and the Barcelona of the Future. Reality versus Plan, which makes part of the Year of Cerdà celebrations. The show focuses on the life and work of Ildefons Cerdà, the progressive Spanish Catalan urban planner who designed the 19th-century "extension" of Barcelona called Eixample (in Catalan).
Parallel to this, the museum hosts again the World Press Photo exhibition of the winning entries in the WPP Competition, which is recognised as the most important touring exhibition of photojournalism in the world. Visit it from November 11 to December 13, 2009.
Just before the New Year, the CCCB is presenting the next Bac! Festival due to kick off December 1. Backbone of the three-month event is the exhibit Bac! 09. Pandoras’B (Women/art/now), which presents the work of key female artists who are somehow involved in fighting for women's role in art, in order to discover new paradigms of creation.
The museum is open from 11am to 8pm (until 10pm on Thursdays and closed on Mondays) and has free admission. For info call +34-93-3064100 or send e-mail.
Those in revolutionary spirit will be thrilled with the exhibition On the Margins of Art. Creation and Political Engagement on show at the The MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona) until September 27 (see editor’s picks below). The MACBA has a very active program of shows for the next months and you’d surely find some of them interesting.
From September 23 to January 17, Modernologies examine modernity as a promising socio-political movement which aspired to form a universal language.
This is followed by the exhibition The Malady of Writing. A project on text and speculative imagination, which brings together the proposals of some fifteen artists, whose works show us how the analysis of the very form of the text and its narrative hides an opportunity to emphasise the need to strengthen the speculative imagination. You can visit it from October 9 to February 9, 2010.
Running in parallel, from October 23 to January 10, The Anarchy of Silence, traces a path through the career of John Cage (1912-92) and becomes the most extensive exhibition to be devoted to the artist on the international stage since his death.
In November, the MACBA presents Ray Johnson. Please Add to & Return, a retrospective of collages and mailings of Ray Johnson (1927–1995), one of the most unknown yet most influential artists of his generation. This exhibition, running from November 6 to January 10, 2010, is the first to be dedicated to Johnson in Spain.
January 2010 sees the opening of two more MACBA shows: Armando Andrade Tudela (Jan. 6 to June 20) in which the Berlin-based Peruvian artist presents his latest film and inaugurates a series of monographic exhibitions in Capella MACBA, and Rodney Graham. Through the Wood (Jan 29 to May 18), which brings together a hundred or so works by the Canadian artist done between 1978 and 2008 and taken from public and private collections in Europe and North America.
Lastly, February is the month dedicated to one of the most notable and influential American artists: the exhibition John Baldessari. Pure Beauty (Feb 11 – April 25) is the biggest retrospective of his work mounted in Spain and contains over 130 works, some of them little known.
MACBA can be visited daily from 10am to 8pm (until 3pm on Sundays) with free admission. For more info call +34-93-4120810 or send e-mail.
If the endless queues outside Barcelona’s star museums are killing you, try some of the city’s most discreet and well-hidden treasures. The Frederic Mares Museum is one of them and will win you immediately as you enter its beautiful courtyard. Housing the collection of a totally obsessive collector whose vast collection is displayed on three separate floors, the museum is presenting a wonderful exhibition of sculptures by Antoni Solà (1780- 1861). The ideal beauty. Antoni Solà (1780-1861), sculptor in Rome runs until September 27 and is the first one devoted solely to the Catalan artisy, one of the great European neoclassical sculptors who reached the maximum artistic recognition of his day in Rome. This is going to be the museum’s last show for the year, since it will remain closed to the public after October in order to embark on its remodelling plan for the permanent collection.
You can visit the museum daily from 10am to 7pm (Sundays until 3pm and Mondays closed) for € 4.20 admission (free on first Sunday of the month and on Wednesdays evening). Contact by phone (+34-93-2563500) or e-mail.
One more little hidden jewel in the Catalan capital, the Casa Àsia, is an institution founded in 2001 by the Spanish Foreign Ministry, the Autonomous government of Catalonia and the municipality of Barcelona. Among other things, Casa Àsia aims to strengthen cultural ties with the Asian and Pacific countries, through organizing exhibition and various events. So, if you are in Barcelona before September 13, go to Casa Àsia to see the very interesting exhibition Archipelagos of Memory, which is actually an installation of the Spanish-Philippine artist Valeria Cavestany about Philippine identity and the progressive 'creolization
' it has experimented, as a result of the successive internal and external diasporas of the population.
Another exhibition, titled Indian Narrative in the 21st Century: Between Memory and History, is on show until September 30 (see editor’s picks below), but the hottest event of the month is the Asia Festival, on September 23-24, which reaches its eighth edition. Expect a super concert of the rock star Cui Jian -precursor of the genre in China- and more than 30 activities for the whole family, in an exciting programme designed in collaboration with Asian communities resident in Barcelona.
You can visit the exhibitions from 10am to 8pm (until 2pm on Sunday and closed on Monday) with free admission. For info call +34-93-3680836 or send e-mail.
A venue that is not too well known amongst visitors in Barcelona is the Palau de la Virreina, home to La Virreina Centre de la Imatge. The activities organised by the Centre are held in two spaces given over to exhibitions. Until September 6, the Espai Xavier Miserachs hosts the show of the French artist Valérie Mréjen, titled Place de la Concorde, which is a selection of videos and short films that place language at the core of the project: nonsensical discussions, repetitions, commonplaces and misunderstandings.
This show is followed by Fotomercè8, which includes the best pictures taken by all the anonymous photographers who throw themselves into Barcelona’s La Mercè festival every year with their cameras at the ready. Visit it from September 18 to October 25.
At La Virreina’s Espai 2 until September 27 you can visit The Self and the Other exhibition, which shows the reality of India through the gaze of sixteen of its most famous photographers. The exhibition's subtitle, "Portraiture in Contemporary Indian Photography", refers to the prism through which we see the changes, dichotomies and alterations in the complex social fabric that makes up life in India.
La Virreina is open daily from 10am to 8pm (closed 2-4pm on weekdays) and has free admission. For info call +34-93-3161000.
A visit to the CaixaForum is a unique experience just for its architecture. But if you do enter the building at the Marquès de Comillas Avenue, do visit the exhibition Andrea Palladio running until September 6. You’ll admire the art of this great architect who was contemporary to some of the most amazing artists of the Renaissance, like Rafael and Michelangelo.
The CaixaForum is also presenting, until September 27, the parallel show Figurations, which comprises 12 large works of art from the museum’s contemporary collection that show the revitalization the painting experienced in the 1980s from the hand of artists such as Miquel Barceló and Ferran García Sevilla.
A third exhibition you can see at the CaixaForum is Maurice de Vlaminck, a Fauve Instinct, on show until October 10 (see editor’s picks below), while also on show until October 20 is the show Just Commerce, which presents audiovisual interactive installations, documentaries and objects that reflect on the commerce of coffee, cocoa, sugar and cotton, four goods whose production in the third world does not respect humane working conditions or pay a just salary.
The CaixaForum is open daily from 10am to 8pm (until 10pm on Saturdays) and has free admission. For info call +34-93-4768600 or send e-mail.
If you are into architecture, go to the Natural Sciences Museum in the Ciutadella, where until September 13 you can see the The Castle of the Three Dragons, which explains how the Catalan Architect Domènech i Montaner transformed a building that was constructed to house a café and a restaurant during the Universal Expo of 1888 into a museum of Natural Sciences.
The museum is open from 10am to 6.30pm (until 2.30 on Sundays and closed on Mondays) and has free entrance. For info call +34-93-3196912.
When in La Plaza del Rey, go to the MUHBA (Museu d'Història de Barcelona) to see two exhibitions that might shed some light to bits of Barcelona’s history you did not know: Transnational Barcelona, connected citizens runs until September 27 and is trying to help people understand how globalization has affected all the citizens, poor or rich, small businesses or big enterprises. It is also showing figures like population growth and immigration rates, as factors that have given pulse to the economy and the new technologies. Also, until January 10, 2010, the exhibition Barcelona and the Floral Games, 1859. Modernization and Romanticism is commemorating the 150 years since the “restoration” of the city’s Jocs Florals and presents that decision as a key moment in the history of Barcelona.
Visit the MUHBA Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 7pm (close from 2 to 4pm) and Sundays until 3pm. Admission is € 1.80 (free on the first Saturday of the month from 4 to 8pm). For more info call +34-93-2562100 or send e-mail.
If you are interested of discovering our cultural past you should go the Ethnological Museum. A visit there is a must if you find yourself at a loss on a Sunday afternoon, or want to break up a nice walk over the Montjüic Park. Apart from its amazing permanent collection of objects from all over the world, until September 28 you can see the exhibition The Carnival of Barranquilla, which features photographs and objects from the famous Colombian Carnival, declared in 2003by UNESCO Leading Work of Humanity’s Oral and Immaterial Heritage.
Also until March 31, 2010, you can see the exhibition Memory of Hunger and War which reflects on the survival strategies people adopted during and after the Civil War. The period on focus is from 1936 to 1959. The exhibition presents Interviews and various materials, such as photographs, letters, postcards, documents and other objects.
Visit the museum daily from 10am to 6pm (until 3pm on Sundays and closed on Mondays) with a € 3.50 admission (50% off concessions and free on the first Sunday of the month. Contact by phone (+34-93-4246807) or e-mail.
First-timers in Barcelona will most likely have to pay the Palau Robert a visit, since this is where the city's tourism bureau is housed. The beautiful building in Passeig de Gràcia used to be the residence of an influential aristocrat, politician and businessman at the turn of the 20th century. Now, it is a government-run institution which also hosts an exhibition centre, a concert hall and gardens. Opera lovers, should seize the opportunity and visit the exhibition Liceu Òpera Barcelona that commemorates the tenth anniversary of Liceu’s reopening after the 1994 fire. The exhibition, which runs until October 4, takes visitors on a trip through the history of the Gran Teatre, with special emphasis on the last ten years of theatrical and musical activity since its reconstruction. When at the Palau Robert be informed on the many more exhibitions taking place in its three halls.
Exhibitions can be visited from 10am to 7pm (Sundays until 2.30pm) and admission is free. For more info call +34-93-2388091-3.
While in the city do not miss the opportunity to visit what many call the finest science museum in Europe. The amazing Science Museum CosmoCaixa Barcleona, which opened in 2005, has an enormous variety of content and an innovative layout, turning it into one of the most modern museums of its kind. The new 50,000 m2 building increases the scientific offer of its predecessor. The exhibitions are distributed throughout various rooms, including the Amazon Forest, the Geological Wall, Planetarium, etc. Visitors are invited to interact with many of the scientific experiments, making the whole experience richer and more entertaining, particularly for children.
Apart from the permanent collections, until October 31 you can visit the exhibition Comparative Technology, which presents a magnificent collection of pre-Columbian pieces related to science and technology, which were gathered over 40 years as part of the Leistenschneidr heritage Institute of Peruvian Culture.
Up until January 31, 2010, an interactive exhibition titled Let’s talk about drugs will be informing the public on the catastrophic effects of drug use and the ways we can protect ourselves, and until February 14, 2010, the exhibition Numbers from a Good Family will be helping visitors to see how important are numbers in all aspects of our daily life.
The museum can be visited from 10am to 8pm (except Mondays) and admission is € 3.00 (reduced is € 2.00) to all events. Contact the museum by phone (+34-93-2126050) or e-mail.