Tag Archives: Spain

Museum Reopening Update: The Prado

Watch the installation of Reunited (6/6/20 – 13/9/20), as the Prado’s director, Miguel Falomir, discusses the exhibition on the museum’s Youtube channel

The Prado has reopened a quarter of its gallery space with Reunited, a new display of nearly 200 paintings from its permanent collection. The exhibition will run until 13 September 2020. The museum’s masterpieces are displayed in novel juxtapositions, offering a new perspective on the permanent collection. For example, for the first time Rubens’ 17th-century “Saturn Devouring His Son” will be adjacent to Francisco Goya’s depiction of the same subject, painted nearly 200 years later. See the Prado’s website for more details on the works included, the new pairings, and additional videos on the exhibition.

The Prado has reopened with a limited capacity of only 1,800 people per day, compared to 15,000 on peak days last year. Visitors will have to book at least 24 hours in advance, have their temperatures checked at the entrance, wear masks throughout the visit, and there will be markings on the floor to indicate safe distances. The museum’s finances remain a concern despite reopening. Ticket prices will be halved until September 13th, and as the museum receives approximately half its funding from ticket sales. Furthermore, foreign tourists usually represent 70-80% of its visitors. The director of the Prado, Miguel Falomir, plans to showcase the museum’s permanent collection, which will help lower costs. Like many in the art world, he is concerned about the sustainability of the expensive ‘blockbuster exhibition’ model, which relies on loans from international collections and includes high insurance costs. However, in an interview with AFP, Falomir ended on a positive note, stating ‘It will take a while, but tourists will once again fill up the museums’.

Information for this post was taken from AFP Relax News, Hoy es arte, and El Museo Nacional del Prado.

Reopening Museums and Galleries in Spain Post Lockdown: A guide from the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport

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The Spanish government’s Ministry of Culture and Sport has recently published a document detailing how museums and galleries may be able to manage visitors and collections once lockdown has been fully lifted in Spain. Xanthe Brooke has written a summary of their guidance:

‘In addition to implementing hygiene and physical distancing rules the Dept. considers that in the short term at least there will be no room for block-buster exhibitions attracting mass tourism, nor social and educational activities attracting groups of visitors, and that cultural activities should resume with the limitation of capacity to one third. Museum libraries, archives and research rooms will not be available to the public until the de-escalation phases have been completed and, in any case, assistance by telematic means will prevail.

Instead museums and galleries should continue to make their collections accessible by placing their collections online by digitisation, virtual reality, and other technological means. The Dept. goes on to state that though lower visitor numbers might increase the quality of the visit, it might also lead to a more ‘elitist museum’, and so museums must ensure that future visitors are diverse, and seek out methods in which participation can involve different sectors of society.

The Reina Sofía Museum of Contemporary Art has already announced that when it re-opens, sometime in early to mid-June, as well as abiding by hygiene and temperature advice, it will: aim to reduce its visitor numbers to 30% of its previous footfall; introduce a 1-way system around its rooms; and withdraw paper brochures, maps, plans and guides to the museum to prevent the transfer of the virus, and instead introduce an app for visitors’ mobile phones.’

Please find additional information on the guidance here (in Spanish): https://www.hoyesarte.com/artes-visuales/como-planificar-la-reapertura-de-los-museos_278418/

Open Access Publication: Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation, eds Tom Nickson and Nicola Jennings

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Click here to read Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation, eds Tom Nickson and Nicola Jennings (London, 2020)

From the dazzling spectacle of Burgos Cathedral to the cavernous nave of Palma Cathedral or the lacy splendour of San Juan de los Reyes, Spain preserves a remarkable variety of inventive but little understood Gothic buildings. Yet Gothic architecture in Spain and the Spanish kingdoms has traditionally been assessed in terms of its imitation of northern European architecture, dismissed for its ‘old-fashioned’ or provincial quality, and condemned for its passive receptivity to ‘Islamic influence’. But did imitation really triumph over invention in the architecture of medieval Iberia? Are the two incompatible? Can inventio and imitatio offer useful or valid analytical tools for understanding Gothic architecture? And to what extent are invention or imitation determined by patrons, architects, materials or technologies? This essay collection brings together leading scholars to examine Gothic architecture from across Iberia from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, and provides the first significant account of Spanish Gothic architecture to be published in English since 1865.

New Funding Opportunity: John Phillip PhD Scholarship in Spanish art and visual culture at the School of Art History, University of St Andrews

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Deadline: Monday 25 May 2020

The School of Art History at the University of St Andrews is delighted to invite applications for the John Phillip Doctoral Scholarship in Spanish Art and Visual Culture, to start in September 2020.

Generously funded by the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica (CEEH), the doctoral scholarship is named after the nineteenth-century Scottish artist John Phillip (1817-1867), who travelled extensively in Spain, and whose work was strongly inspired by the art of Velázquez and Murillo.

The scholarship is available to both Home/EU and Overseas candidates, and is tenable for three years (full-time). It is a full scholarship, covering tuition fees, plus an annual stipend of £15,285 for living expenses, and an annual research allowance of £5,000.

The scholarship will fund a doctoral research project that focuses on the history of Spanish art and visual culture between ca. 1600 and 1700. We will also consider research projects devoted to the reception of seventeenth-century Spanish art in later periods, up to ca. 1900.

Applicants should apply via the University of St Andrews application process: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/study/pg/apply/research/

The deadline for applications is Monday 25 May 2020.

For informal queries, intending applicants may contact Dr José Ramón Marcaida (jrm32@st-andrews.ac.uk).

Click here for more information.

‘Picasso and Paper’: An Exhibition at the RA and a Programme of Events Organised by the Instituto Cervantes London

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Picasso didn’t just draw on paper – he tore it, burnt it, and made it three-dimensional. From studies for ‘Guernica’ to a 4.8-metre-wide collage, this major exhibition, open until 13 April 2020 at the Royal Academy, brings together more than 300 works on paper spanning the artist’s 80-year career. Click here for more information.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Instituto Cervantes has organised a programme of talks and concerts paying homage to the famous Spanish artist.

An invitation for ARTES members: Osma Centenary Conference, 7 February, Bodleian Library and Pembroke College, Oxford

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Dear Fellow ARTES Members,

We look forward to celebrating the life and work of the first Spaniard to graduate from Oxford with you!

Osma Centenary
7 February
Bodleian Library
Pembroke College

Guillermo J. de Osma was the first Spaniard to study at Oxford after the Universities Test Act 1871, which opened Oxford, Cambridge and Durham universities to non-Anglicans. Osma was a diplomat, a politician, an art historian and an art collector. He served as the first president of the Board of Trustees of the Alhambra and founded the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan, a research centre in Madrid, which contains a wide-ranging collection of art works and archival materials, including medieval manuscripts, Philipp II’s state papers, textiles, ceramics, and rare books.

He then went on to found the first Spanish scholarship at Oxford – the Osma Studentship – in 1920. The Studentship, which was open to both men and women since its foundation, is under the exclusive remit of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford and has been held over the past century by many distinguished scholars and practitioners.

The one-day symposium will be held at the Bodleian Library on 7 February 2020 to coincide with the anniversary of Osma’s death and will convene Osma Students from across the generations and countries, specialists from Spain and the UK, and de Osma’s descendants from around the globe.

The symposium will be held in the Lecture Theatre at the Weston Library on Broad Street. Lunch will be served at Convocation House in the presence of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson. After the symposium, we will make our way to Pembroke, where Osma read History, for an evening reception.

Welcome Coffee: 9.45 am
Start: 10.30 am
Reception: 5.30–7pm

Please click here for a conference programme and practical information.

For questions, contact: marina.perezdearcos@politics.ox.ac.uk

Marina Perez de Arcos

POSTPONED: Call for Papers: The Astorga Collection, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, 20 May 2020

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Prester John illustration from
*Coleccion de los trages* (shelfmark G.5.a.1)
National Library of Scotland

ARTES members with experience of using the National Library of Scotland’s Astorga Collection or expertise in topics related to its formation and contents are encouraged to contribute to an upcoming conference organised by Dr Christopher Storrs, Reader in History at the University of Dundee, to be held in Edinburgh on Wednesday 20 May 2020.

The collection contains 3,617 early-modern Spanish printed books and is one of the National Library of Scotland’s lesser-known treasures. Part of the library of an aristocratic Spanish family, the Marqueses de Astorga, it was acquired in 1826 for the Advocates Library (the National Library’s precursor) by Sir Walter Scott’s son-in-law, J.G. Lockhart. The collection contains several texts on history, theology, geography and science, and illustrated books, some with maps or hand-coloured plates. Eleven are incunabula, and many others date to the sixteenth century.

At present, the conference programme includes presentations on Sir Walter Scott and Spain, J.G. Lockhart, and themes related to the Astorga collection in a nineteenth-century British context. Additionally, the organisers seek proposals addressing the collection from a Spanish viewpoint, notably on the Astorga family, the situation of Spain in the early nineteenth century, the book acquisitions and their value to historians. Papers on Golden Age holdings are particularly encouraged.

The collection is catalogued on the NLS’ website under the shelfmark G. (click here), but a handlist is also available upon application.

For further information, and to propose a conference paper, please email Dr Christopher Storrs, c.d.storrs@dundee.ac.uk.

Zurbarán Fellow Public Lecture: Dr Luis Vives-Ferrándiz Sánchez, ‘The empire strikes back: Baroque art and Spanish contemporary culture’, 12th November at 5.30 pm, Kenworthy Hall, St Mary’s College, Durham University

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Javier Olivares, Santiago García, The Ladies-in-Waiting (Fantagraphics: 2017)

Hispanic identity has been shaped during the last century by a conscious selection of historical periods of its history. After the loss of the last colonies of the former Spanish Empire at the end of the 19th century, the nation had hit rock bottom in political terms. To counterbalance this decline, writers, poets, essayists and scholars from the so-called generation of ’98 aimed for the restoration of the cultural splendor of the Spanish Golden Age, a period of flourishing in the arts and literature that spans from Philip II’s reign until the death of Charles II in 1700, the last of the Habsburg monarchs. This wish has been constant through the 20th century and is also connected with the rise of neobaroque aesthetics and postmodernism. Baroque has become a multifaceted concept and, nowadays, is more a space of reflection than a chronological or formal label. The lecture will explore the continuity of baroque art in Spanish contemporary culture such as art, photography, cinema, pop music, comics, cartoons, internet memes, football or television series, where the fascination with Spanish Golden Age is not only a matter of style or aesthetics but also political and identitary. From inspiration to appropriation, from art galleries to politics, baroque art is a powerful tool in contemporary Spain.

Click here for more information.

CFP: Diego de Riaño, Diego Siloé y la Arquitectura en la Transición del Gótico al Renacimiento, Seville-Granada, May 11-15, 2020

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline: December 15, 2019

The call for papers is open for the DR-DS 2020 International Congress, which will be hosted in the cities of Seville and Granada, from the 11th to the 15th of May, 2020. The congress will include inaugural and closing conferences by professors Amadeo Serra, from the Universitat de València, and Fernando Marías, from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, as well as a number of highly qualified guest speakers.

The great transformation experienced by Spanish architecture during the reign of Emperor Charles V finds a brilliant and diverse expression in the activity of Diego de Riaño and Diego Siloé. Both masters, one working in the Sevillian metropolis and the other in the former Nasrid capital, the last bastion of Islam on the Peninsula, defined two very different models of operation. Both produced some of the first Spanish buildings with a fully Renaissance language.

This congress proposes to approach these two great architects in the context of the transition to the Renaissance in Spain. They will also serve as a pretext for tackling similar phenomena from a broader perspective, incorporating methodological and historiographic problems within a European framework. The organisers invite national and international researchers to an event that builds a cooperative space for interdisciplinary dialogue, offering an attractive and exciting programme of keynotes and plenary sessions given by experts in the field, with the presentation of unpublished papers selected by a scientific committee. All contributions will be published in an edited volume. Papers are subject to evaluation using a double-blind peer reviewed system to ensure scientific quality.

The congress will be hosted in Seville and Granada. The organization will be responsible for the transport between the two cities. The conference will open on 11 May in Seville. Paper sessions will be accompanied by special visits, for example to the sacristy of Seville cathedral and the city’s town hall, both works by Diego de Riaño. On 13 May sessions will take place in Granada, including a visit to the cathedral, designed by Diego Siloé, and Charles V’s palace, designed by Pedro Machuca.

The conference will focus on the following themes:
General:
– Theoretical and historiographic approaches.
– Graphic and documentary testimonials.- Science and technology.
– Architecture and city.
– Promoters, patrons, ideologists, artificers.
Specific:
– Diego de Riaño and Lower Andalusia.
– Diego Siloé and Eastern Andalusia.
– The transition to Renaissance in other areas.

Deadline: December 15, 2019
The abstracts (1000 words maximum, in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French or English) should be sent to: http://gestioneventos.us.es/38059/section/21403/congreso-dr-ds.html

Opens Today: Alonso Berruguete: First Sculptor of Renaissance Spain, NGA, Washington DC, until 17 February 2020

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Alonso Berruguete: First Sculptor of Renaissance Spain will be the first major exhibition held outside Spain to celebrate the expressive art of the most important sculptor active on the Iberian Peninsula during the first half of the 16th century, Alonso Berruguete. The exhibition will present an impressive range of more than 40 works from across his career, including examples of his earliest paintings from his time in Italy, where he trained. His abilities as draftsman will also be celebrated with the largest group of his drawings ever to be assembled. The primary focus will be on his painted sculptures in wood, which generally decorated large altarpieces, or retablos. The Museo Nacional de Escultura in Valladolid, Spain, will be lending a substantial group of some of his very best figures. A section of one of his altarpieces will be loosely reconstructed in the exhibition to convey an idea of how his sculptures were originally seen.

The exhibition is curated by C. D. Dickerson III, curator and head of sculpture and decorative arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

A fully illustrated catalog accompanying the exhibition will be the first general book on Berruguete published in English and will feature essays by Dickerson as well as Manuel Arias Martínez, deputy director, Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid, and Mark McDonald, curator of Italian, Spanish, Mexican, and early French prints and illustrated books, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas.

It will travel to the Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, from March 29 to July 26, 2020.

Click here for more information.