Prado Museum, the eternal and essential
According to the report 2017 TEA/AECOM Theme & Museum Index , a total of 107,976,000 people visited one of the 20 most popular museums in the world . A year-on-year growth of 0.22% and a total figure that demonstrates a reality: these cultural institutions are more fashionable than ever.
Above all, because they have opened their minds, they have allowed other artistic, creative and scientific languages to enter their showcases and have known how to interact in a more entertaining way with retinas increasingly avid for anabolized stimuli.
However, for those who do not give in to this trend, the universe has aligned so that throughout this year they will have a traveling excuse to get lost in its waxed and long galleries.
** PRADO MUSEUM, MADRID **
Castizo pride has made many of us from Madrid boast of this institution, classifying it as the best gallery in the world . Something that will stop being an innocent bravado to become an indisputable reality during the year of its bicentennial.
It is not that during these 365 days hidden works will be discovered like that Gioconda with a white label that filled the museum with curious people more than five years ago. Rather it is that the quality of its collection will be vindicated through exhibitions that are on a par with few cultural centers like Fra Angelico and the beginnings of the Renaissance in Florence or Velazquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer . Similar views in Spain and Holland. And to round it off, an exhibition on its two centuries celebrating its changes, its evolution and its bright future.
Prado Museum. a place of memory
** V&A DUNDEE, SCOTLAND **
The first months of a museum are evaluated in absolute magnitudes. And this center dedicated to Scottish design opened in September 2018 is a real success in terms of visitors, as it reached the magical figure of 100,000 tickets sold three weeks after opening.
On the other hand, the first full calendar year should be valued more for the quality of its exhibitions, since they define the ambition of a project. And this one has no but, with a program in which the aesthetics of video games and the future of robotics will be discussed.
The opening of the moment in Scotland
** THE MUSEUM OF FLIGHT (SEATTLE) **
This museum was born to vindicate the role of this city in the conquest and development of commercial and transport routes throughout the North pacific . And, although it has been in the shadow, for decades, of other similar institutions throughout the country, this year it receives the jackpot with the visit of the exhibition Destination: Moon , the traveling exhibition of NASM of Washington that talks about the great anniversary of 2019: the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the human being on the Moon.
** SOULAGES MUSEUM (RODEZ) **
The childhood of this museum, only 5 years old, has been a never-ending succession of joys. So much so that it seems the 100th birthday of Pierre Soulages It is one more date in his short history. And yet, it is a crucial celebration, not only because of how unusual it still is for an artist to accumulate 10 decades on his ribs but for being the ideal time to vindicate his role in current contemporary art.
A value that goes beyond how expensive his works are sold (he is the most valuable living French artist today), and that focuses more on his ability to innovate with unique materials and with textures and colors that only seek one thing: to catch the light and show it like never before.
A space dedicated to Pierre Soulages
** BAUHAUS MUSEUM (DESSAU) **
The centenary of the Bauhaus movement has its main architectural news in Dessau. And it is that Addendum , a sum of architects based in Barcelona created for this project, signs the new museum dedicated to this school in one of the cities where this style took root more and better.
A building that modernizes the lines of the Bauhaus, stylizes and adapts them to house inside the great collection that the city has about the designers of this school.
The new museum dedicated to the Bauhaus
** FASHION FOR GOOD MUSEUM (AMSTERDAM) **
There is nothing like a museum in one of the most visited cities on the planet to spread an idea. That is what they thought in the Fashion for Good platform, a company created to publicize and put in contact companies, suppliers and designers who are committed to giving an ecological and sustainable twist to the fashion business.
That is why they opened a museum a few months ago which, in the center of the dutch metropolis , explains in a practical and sexy way why the future will be responsible and who will lead this last revolution.
The (fashion) movement starts here
** MO MUSEUM VILNIUS (VILNIUS) **
Something is happening in the Baltic countries in terms of art. Its galleries have ceased to be exotic coordinates welcome at all bienpensante international fair to be a mine of creativity and unexpected gems.
A climate that, on the other hand, cried out for a house like MO, a center dedicated to contemporary art in the Lithuanian capital that has everything to succeed: a compact and photogenic design Libeskind's work and a collection where no Lithuanian artist or key discipline of the last 70 years is missing.
An unexpected little gem in Vilnius
**GLENSTONE MUSEUM (MARYLAND)**
Little by little, the tendency to open museums in remote places is consolidating, making the journey and the discovery among nature is part of the experience of visiting it.
An example of this is this institution that has opened an extension between the green fields of Maryland but close enough to Washington D.C. as not to be a rare bird. Inside and in its conception, it is surprising for this dialogue between landscape, volumes and works by artists such as louis bourgeois.
the glenstone yard
MUSEUM ISLAND ( BERLIN )
It is not that the epicenter of culture in Berlin has a new tenant, it is that its urban planning changes completely thanks to a new access projected by David Chipperfield where the inputs converge Neues Museum, the Pergamon Museum and the Bode Museum . A column called James Simon Gallery in honor of this German philanthropist that also includes a large exhibition hall whose programming has not yet been confirmed.
Museum Island in Berlin
** GEM (CAIRO) **
Behind him is the typical dance of news, false openings and architectural soap operas typical of an institution of this magnitude. But finally in 2019 will open part of the museum with which Egypt seeks to return to the international tourist map.
Of course, without resorting to an exclusively media museum. And it is that, instead of devising a spectacular space to house the pieces of the mythical Egyptian museum in Cairo, they have chosen to create a futuristic, interactive and highly informative center to be able to enjoy this complex culture like never before.
This is the facade of the Great Egyptian Museum