Ten reasons to return to a museum in 2015
1. BARCELONA RAISED
The city of Barcelona has put the batteries to reorganize and considerably improve its museum potential. In case you were missing a little, three new centers occupy the lists of novelties of the city and raise the cultural level of its offer, beyond the always enjoyable Gothic and Modernism of its main monuments. The first to be inaugurated was the Museu del Disseny, the icing on the cake of the brand new Plaza de las Glorias Catalanas. In a striking and effective building designed by MBM Arquitectes, a brief historical retrospective of the decorative arts as well as an important collection of design and author's arts of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Just arrived and very well agreed
To this we must add another two inaugurations for this 2015. The first is the ** Museu de Cultures del Món **, a natural evolution of different museums that combine their collections under a new, more striking brand, with the Ethnological Museum and the Folch Collection as their main sources of objects. To the very charm of its showcases we must add the charm of its buildings, the Palau del Marquès de Llió and Palau Nadal, two of the most mythical buildings in the Ribera neighbourhood.
The latest novelty is the culmination of the long process by which the mythical factory of Artés olive from Poblenou it will become another pavilion of the ** Barcelona History Museum **. Under the name of Big City/Smart City, an exhibition will enable this space and will serve to show how this city has become a metropolis over the last few centuries. But, above all, there will be the rehabilitation of a new space renovated by the BAAS studio that aims to be a new cultural icon.
Next opening: 2015
two. THE RECONVERSION OF MALAGA
That Malaga is changing by leaps and bounds is already an open secret that is easy to discover. Beyond being the capital of the Costa del Sol, it has managed to attract to another audience that is not exclusively a beach bar thanks to its cultural offerings . In 2015, it celebrates another small milestone along this path with the inauguration of its own non-permanent branch of the Pompidou museum. In other words, a striking cube in the heart of the port where you can enjoy some of the most important works of the French museum.
To the fireworks of this modern silhouette we must add the culmination of the project of Malaga Museum, a new use for the Customs Palace where the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Provincial Archaeological Museum will be merged . A project that plans to open its doors during 2015 with which Phoenician remains, Roman sculptures and paintings by artists such as Murillo, Velázquez, Goya or Zurbarán will be polished.
Hipster Malaga in one day
3. THE BEAUTIFUL PROCESS OF DECENTRALIZATION: FROM PARIS TO ABU DHABI
The Pompidou cube in Malaga is part of the decentralizing trend why the main French museums are opening twin brothers far from their original locations. In addition to Malaga, the most spectacular premiere of this process is that of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, an event that has it all. First, because it is backed by the most well-known and mediatic museum in the world. Second, because it has petrodollars and the spectacular nature always associated with Persian Gulf . And third, because behind the project is Jean Nouvelle , who has become obsessed with erecting a building according to the culture and the environment, fleeing from gratuitous spectacularity.
The result is a large vault 180 meters in diameter that tries to identify itself with the vaults of the Arab mosques. And below it, galleries and more galleries with paintings whose property is 100% of this museum as 'The subjugated reader ' of Rene Magritte either Gauguin's 'Breton Children'.
This will be the Louvre in Abu Dhabi
Four. IN SEARCH OF THE GUGGENHEIM EFFECT
Abu Dhabi is not the only city that wants to take advantage of the opening of a museum in 2015 to expand its international projection. Lyon has been the earliest riser thanks to the Musée des Confluences , opened on the 20th and which is a kind of museum of history, nature and archeology that has changed the color of an entire neighborhood thanks to the shocking design of Coop-Himmelblau.
For its part, Moscow intends to remove any negative label thanks to the Garage Museum of contemporary art , the new inhabitant of Gorky Park . Apart from trying to collect everything that is being created in the country and its surroundings, the great claim is a building with which Rem Koolhas continues to put his particular gimmicky thumbtacks in the world, managing to change everything that surrounds his projects. .
Rio de Janeiro will take advantage of the year of transition between the World Cup and the Olympic Games to claim a new icon (and there are already a few). And it is that the Museum of Tomorrow it is made by and to attract the flashes. His intention is clear: to make a space that does not exist in the world, both for its content and for its continent. The museum's collection revolves around what the world will be like in the coming decades , a kind of apology for new trends in life, urban planning, technology, etc. But its real strong point is the architectural one, with Santiago Calatrava redeeming e with a self-sufficient, miraculous and eye-catching building in the heart of Guanabara Bay.
Finally, the Japanese city of Toyama will be long thanks to the glass museum with which Kengo Okuma will put this city on the map.
He longs to be a Guggenheim... and almost succeeds
5. THE ARTIST OF 2015: VAN GOGH
Good old Vincent grabs attention with the celebration of the 125th anniversary of his death. To do this, half the universe has agreed to honor him, although the epicenter of the party will be in the Netherlands and Belgium. His museum in Amsterdam will house one of the exhibitions of the year, Munch and Van Gogh, with which he will expose the biographical and artistic similarities of two of the most revolutionary painters in history. For his part, the ** Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo (Holland) **, will show more than 50 works by him and his contemporaries focused on the great genres of the late nineteenth century: still life, view and perspective, nature, landscape urban and portrait.
Outside the Dutch borders, the great exhibition with which Mons will open its European cultural capital stands out: Van Gogh in the Borinage. A complete review of the time when Vincent lived in this Belgian region.
This year the protagonist is Van Gogh
6. PREMIERES IN LONDON, NEW YORK AND LOS ANGELES
The great cities of the world have not forgotten that museums continue to have the ability to attract more and more visitors. London will add a new 'must' to its already extensive cultural offer: the personal collection of the artist Damien Hirst, where works by Bacon or Jeff Koons . For its part, New York will dress up to celebrate the opening of the new headquarters of the Whitney Museum of American Art, which will be located in a building that Renzo Piano has designed overlooking the Hudson River.
The novelty in Los Angeles is the most remarkable because it brings a facet to the city that it did not have before. The Broad Museum is the cultural face that will seek to counteract the frivolity not only of Hollywood, but of all cultural expression of L.A. **(with Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in the lead) **. To the 'responsible' and elegant of its building we must add a collection that includes the best of contemporary art, with works by Lichtenstein, Koons or Basquiat.
Los Angeles more artie and less Hollywood
7. LONG LIVE THE MYTHOMUSEUMS
But 2015 will also give for them to continue to proliferate museums dedicated to a personality, a magnet for mythomaniacs and nostalgics who seek to recreate their own memories within its walls. And there are already museums for everyone, but in this particular firmament they will have their museum star Cantinflas (in Mexico D.F.), Fernando Alonso (next to a car complex in Morgal, Asturias) and María Callas in Athens. To them we must add that of a whole style, the Blues. And it is that for those who make a pilgrimage to Saint Louise looking for the sad 'blue notes' of their sound they will have a new temple: the National Blues Museum.
8. A PRITZKER IN COLORADO
Among the great innovations that the marriage between architecture and museums will have in 2015, the most striking will be the Aspen Art Museum (Aspen, Colorado). And it will be because it will have the signature of the always wayward and innovative Shigeru Ban, who has designed a wooden cube with which to attract the attention of the luxurious visitors to this city. A subtle way of telling them: "Hey! That contemporary art also has a place in après ski”.
There is (a lot) of life beyond skiing in Aspen
9. THE STAR EXHIBITIONS
Beyond Van Gogh's leading role, 2015 is full of exhibitions that deserve a trip, such as the great M unch retrospective organized by the Thyssen Museum (the first in 30 years in Madrid) or the exhibition that celebrates 150 years of the Ringstrasse in Vienna: Klimt and the Ringstrasse at the Belvedere museum. To these must be added the surprising exhibition on Björk at MoMA, the ambitious retrospective on Gauguin at the Beyeler Foundation in Basel or the tribute to Niki de Saint Phalle at the Guggenheim in Bilbao.
10. MUSEUMS THAT ARE NOT MUSEUMS
The year 2015 will also be a year of biennials, triennials and other artistic celebrations capable of taking art to other places . That's why it's a good idea to write down your dates so as not to miss the opportunity to enjoy culture in spaces such as the Arsenale (Venice Biennale), La Sucriére (Lyon Biennale), the Alatza Imaret archaeological site (Thessaloniki Biennale), the old factories of the Ruhr (Ruhrtriennale) or the charming promenades of the Flemish coast (Beaufort 2015) .
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*** You may also be interested in...**
- Hipster Malaga
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- All articles by Javier Zori del Amo