BARCELONA ............. (late March/early April 2022)

 

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IN BLACK-AND-WHITE...

EN BLANCO Y NEGRO...

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...AND COLOR

...Y COLOR

                   

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Footnote

 

A number of the above photographs are from the museums listed below that I visited on this trip to Barcelona.

MOCO (Moco Museum Barcelona). Located in the Palacio Cervelló, also known as Casa dels Giudice or Palau Cervelló-Giudice, the Palacio is one of the “great private residences that were built on Montcada Street in the medieval period as the residence of the most important families in the city.” The Palace re-opened as a museum in 2021.

MEAM (Museu Europeu d'Art Modern). Also located on Montcada Street, the museum is housed in an older palace that was totally rebuilt in 1792 by textile merchant Josep Melcior Gomis. It reopened in 2011 after an extensive restoration and renovation project under the direction of the architect Jordi Garcés, 

Palau Güell . A house museum, this is an early work completed in 1888 by architect Antoni Gaudi of Sagrada Familia fame. An extensive conservation and restoration project that was led by the local architectural heritage service of the Barcelona provincial council was completed in 2011. The house is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site: "Works of Antoni Gaudí.”

Casa Batllo. Another house museum that is also a UNESCO World Heritage site, designed as a complete renovation by Antoni Gaudi in 1906 from an earlier house on the site. It was recently added to by modern-day starchitect Kengo Kuma who designed a chain-clad staircase, part of “the architectural intervention (that) forms the vertical circulation core of the Casa Batlló experience, a new 2,000 sqm. immersive exhibition inside the modernist masterpiece.” 

CaixaForum. An original textile factory designed by the famous Catalan architect Josep Puig Cadafalch in 1911 and renovated and added to by Japanese starchitect Arata Isozaki in 2002.

MNAC (Museu Nacional Art Catalunya). Located in the Palau Nacional at the apex of the Parc de Montjuïc, the museum was originally built as the main hall of the 1929 International Exhibition. Designed by Eugeni P. Cendoya and Enric Catà, with the collaboration of Pere Domènech i Roura, this edifice “falls within the style known as Eclectic Monumentalism.”

Fundació Joan Miró. Designed by starchitect (before there were “starchitects”) Jose Lluís Sert, a personal friend of Miro. He was a visiting Professor at the University of Virginia when I was selected to be part of a semester-long, Vertical Studio that included students from each of the five years that he taught. The building was completed in 1975. In 1988 and 2000 extensions to the building were overseen by Sert’s friend and pupil Jaume Freixa.

Museu de Ciències Naturals. The Natural History Museum of Barcelona. Before being converted into a museum in 2011, then known as the Museu Blau, the structure was popularly known as the Forum Building because it is located in the Parc del Fòrum in Barcelona's newly redesigned Diagonal Mar district. It was designed by even more starchitects, Herzog & de Meuron of Switzerland.

 

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