Small and medium-sized museums that make Barcelona a unique city
By Maria Palau
Barcelona has a strong artistic heartbeat. It could not be otherwise, considering it is the city where three of the most important creators of the 20th century showcased their talent: Picasso, Miró, and Dalí. The first two have monographic museums that display some of their masterpieces. Their centers, with a long history, are the most well-known and visited of the rich fabric of artistic institutions of this Mediterranean capital, so deeply tied to its cosmopolitan cultural character. The public, both local and foreign, has fully integrated them into their cultural habits. And the same happens in other major museums, such as the contemporary art museum (MACBA) or the canonical museum of Catalan art from its Romanesque roots (MNAC), where attendance is also massive.
But far from these top facilities, the most popular attractions of a city that the world watches and admires, there is another Barcelona, somewhat secret and, above all, very unique with a wide network of small to medium-sized centers. Or not so far: most are located on the most central and well-connected streets. They cannot compete in quantity, nor in the funds or the surface area of their headquarters. Their contents and their containers are of a human scale. But they can certainly boast of excellence and their own character. And there is no doubt that what they are tremendously far from is the hustle and bustle experienced, and sometimes suffered, by the star museums, with their long lines and crowded rooms.
Many museum-goers value institutions that break away from uniform models and cherish their unique and non-transferable characteristics. Indeed, major cities are increasingly resembling each other, and this affects the soul of their artistic institutions, which become homogenized as another effect of globalization. Beyond the essentials promoted by official guides, Barcelona's alternative offerings (alternative, yes, but by no means marginal) are particularly strong. These are deeply rooted and charming places that one must not just look for but truly wish to discover. They do not go unnoticed, yet their treasures are much more hidden. The reward is a more authentic art experience because they have no equivalent in any other city.
From Warhol to Ancient Egypt
Dalí does not have a museum in Barcelona and, to add to the frustration, he is not an artist that is widely represented in public collections. To immerse oneself in his creative universe, the best option is to travel to the region where he was born, grew up, and died, in Empordà, less than two hours from the capital. However, the surrealist genius has managed to infiltrate the Fundació Suñol. This center, located at number 98 on the most traditional and busy avenue, both day and night, Passeig de Gràcia, is a paradigm of a very Catalan way of being and doing. Its owner, the businessman Josep Suñol, exemplifies the cultural leadership that civil society has traditionally exercised to compensate for the shortcomings of its public institutions. For many years, Suñol was a patron behind the scenes. Thanks to his relationship with the Madrid gallery owner Fernando Vijande, who introduced the avant-garde in Spain in the seventies, he assembled a collection of more than 1,200 works from the turbulent twentieth century, mainly of Spanish art but with magnificent highlights of art from the rest of Europe and North America. Dalí, yes. And Picasso and Miró, too. And Warhol, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Richard Avedon, Giacomo Balla, Jean Arp, Alberto Giacometti... A roster of luxury.
For decades, Josep Suñol's contemporary art collection was the most consistent in private hands throughout the Spanish State. Perhaps it still is. But it wasn't until 2007 that he decided to open it to the public. His extremely private personality made it difficult for him to take this step. Nor would just any venue do to showcase it. An art collection formed from impulses of friendship and love had to be welcomed with the same sentiment. In the end, he chose to refurbish the estate where he himself was raised. A modernist property, of course. This domestic setting is its strong point. Because here, everything happens intimately.
The Suñol Foundation displays a program of exhibitions and activities that promote the artists and perspectives from its collection. In addition, it extends into an annexed space, the Nivell Zero, with a separate entrance on Rosselló street, within which it spreads more daring artistic projects for an audience demanding the latest trends in contemporary creation.
Without leaving Passeig de Gràcia, we can take a long journey back in time that will transport us to art from over 5,000 years ago. Once again, we encounter a Barcelona that has been shaped by personal determination, without the aid of any political power, military force, or aristocratic fortune, to gather signs of the most remote civilizations that laid the foundations of our culture. In this case, we are talking about the Egyptian Museum, driven by another entrepreneur, Jordi Clos. Another victim of the collecting bug. His passion is concentrated on Calle València, 284, right next to the beautiful boulevard. Clos began displaying his archaeological pieces in his flagship hotel, the Claris, in the early nineties. In 1994, he opened a modest-sized museum on Rambla de Catalunya, and finally, in 2000, he moved to the current, much larger facilities to accommodate his extensive collections, comprising more than 1,300 works.
Clos, of humble origins, dreamed of becoming the Spanish Indiana Jones. And he has achieved it with flying colors. He is not just a lynx tracking down in the auction market pieces that have had the most select owners, from princesses to diabolical looters, including the odd Nazi, but he also participates in excavation campaigns in the land of the Nile. In his museum, which has no equal on the Iberian Peninsula and is recognized throughout Europe, jewels that would be coveted by the entire Louvre or British Museum are on display. Take for example the mummy of the Lady of Kemet, covered with a sensual portrait (real, as scientific investigations have determined) of this young woman who died in the last days of the Roman domination of the Egyptian empire. A world that disintegrated in the most literal sense of the word: its relics ended up scattered across half the planet. And reuniting them is precisely one of the stimuli for the collector Jordi Clos. The best proof of this is the reconstruction he has promoted of the tomb of Iny, an official of the sixth dynasty who served up to three pharaohs. The funerary chapel of this real character was looted and divided into many fragments that the Barcelona patron has been identifying and recovering over many years.
Modernist skin
The case of Josep Suñol is not an exception. The route through the city's most charming museums leads us to the interiors of old residences of the Barcelona bourgeoisie who, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, aligned themselves with the Modernist aesthetic to broadcast their way of seeing and being in the world. A Modernism that, once again, is reduced to the bare minimum by tourist brochures. On Passeig de Gràcia (yes, we're still there), not only do La Pedrera and Casa Batlló dazzle, two of Gaudí's icons. On the nearby street of Diputació, 250, stands a building with a rather discreet facade but with a sensitive eye, one can detect a thousand and one thrilling details. It is the Casa Garriga Nogués that Enric Sagnier built for a wealthy family of bankers. When it lost its residential use, it went through multiple occupations, not always respectful of its extraordinary heritage, until in 2008 it was rescued (a miraculous restoration was carried out) and converted into a space for art. First, for the art of a pioneering private collection in Barcelona, that of the industrialist and Formula 1 driver Francisco Godia, which was inherited by his daughter Liliana. This project ended in 2015, but was immediately followed by another: that of the Mapfre Foundation.
The Madrid institution has filled a gap in Barcelona's cultural map with a program that has two mainstays: painting and photography by universal artists. Canvases and snapshots take on new life and send out new messages by flirting with very special architectural and decorative elements that are nothing like the sterile atmospheres of the big museums. With ornaments such as the solemn marble staircase in the lobby or the set of stained glass windows that provide light and color to the different rooms, the works of art are seen in a different light. There's nothing like seeing it for yourself.
At the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, the modernist skin with an industrial nature shelters one of the most solid artistic manifestations of the Catalan scene from the second half of the 20th century. Tàpies, the most internationally recognized Spanish artist after Picasso, Miró, and Dalí, chose the original Montaner i Simón publishing house for his museum, which Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Gaudí's teacher, created in 1880 at the dawn of this new architectural language. Tàpies understood perfectly that the dialogue between the old and the new is transformative. He not only filled the walls with his famous material works but also intervened on the building's rooftop to give it another layer of meaning. At the top of the building, he installed the sculpture Cloud and Chair, a symbol of a Barcelona that has never given up on its dreams, no matter how unattainable they may seem.
The Tàpies Foundation was inaugurated in 1990 and was reopened twenty years later after a meticulous renovation, with the reinforced 'Cloud and Chair' along with a second manifesto of modernity: the medium-sized sculpture 'Mitjó', which stands out on its terrace. Located at 225 Aragó Street (yes, at the corner with Passeig de Gràcia), this center exhibits the art of the artist who gave it meaning, in harmony with the temporary exhibitions that are organized to address the multidisciplinary commitment of contemporary artistic creation.
A legacy that could have vanished
Although it may be hard to believe today, modernism was not always appreciated. In fact, it was forgotten for decades and suffered denigration until the 1970s. During this period of mistreatment, both conscious and unconscious, antique dealers Fernando Pinós and María Guirao would scour through trash bins and rubble from demolitions in search of furniture and objects of this style that the heirs of the decadent bourgeoisie no longer wanted at all. They bought from some of these descendants at bargain prices that ornamental universe which had accompanied and beautified their everyday lives. With all this legacy that soon began to appreciate in value, they created in 2010 the Museum of Modernism, in a building on Balmes Street, number 48, which, logically, is from the era (designed by Enric Sagnier).
In addition to a splendid collection of paintings and sculptures, with Ramon Casas and Santiago Rusiñol at the forefront, this museum preserves some of the most spectacular interiors created by modernist virtuoso artisans for the elites of the thriving city. Wonders that were on the verge of disappearing when they were expelled from palaces as exquisite as Casa Felip, Casa Batlló, or Casa Garriga Nogués.
We haven't moved from Passeig de Gràcia and its surroundings. But Barcelona remains a handkerchief if the walker enters its old town. In the historical fabric, fascinating artistic spaces coexist that the masses of tourists almost never include in their circuits. One of the most recent additions is the Fundació Foto Colectania, which in 2017 left its premises in Sant Gervasi for a location in Born that is also steeped in memory. It's an old early 20th-century establishment that sold saddlery items. Today, in this shop, high-quality photographic projects are on display. Allied with artistic expressions, Barcelona is a city that constantly reinvents itself without giving up its past.
Maria Palau (Campdevànol, 1975) is a journalist at the newspaper El Punt Avui
