Spanish museums celebrate Museum Day with workshops, concerts and visits to spaces closed to the public

Workshops, visits to restricted spaces, concerts and participatory activities are the focus of the programming with which museums and cultural institutions will celebrate International Museum Day next Monday, May 18, which in this edition is articulated under the motto ‘Museums uniting a divided world’.

The National Prado Museum will celebrate the anniversary with a program that reinforces its role as a space for meeting, reflection and active participation of society. Thus, the art gallery and the Reina Sofía are hosting their first public institutional meeting, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the Reina Sofía and a look at the Prado’s first 25 years of the 21st century.

Within this framework of openness and active participation, the programming includes an initiative for the public to choose the design of the museum’s next entrances, and the III Editatona ‘El Prado en feminine’, organized together with Wikimedia Spain.

Throughout the day, the Prado National Museum will offer free access, inviting visitors to tour its permanent collection and participate in a celebration that highlights the role of museums as spaces of shared knowledge and social cohesion.

For its part, the Reina Sofía, in addition to the conversation with the director of the Prado, Miguel Falomir, joins Radio 3 to offer twelve hours of live music next Friday, May 22. The event will take place in the Patio of the Nouvel Building of its art gallery and will have free entry from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

Names such as Zahara, La Pegatina, Soleá Morente, Gara Durán and La Tania stand out on its billboard. And it is completed by other artists such as Carlangas, Knowing Russia, Fetén Fetén, Shego, Dear Joanne, Mala Gestión, Niño Bravos, Go Cactus, Kokoshca, Queralt Lahoz, María José Llergo, O Kwarteto, Sienna, Micky y los colossi del corazón, Pipiola, Zetak, Ven’nus, Hnos Muñoz, Escandaloso Xpósito, Erik Urano, Estrellas del Rap Nacional (Teo Lucadamo, Manu El and DAWIT), Ángel Stanich and Bizarre Love Triangle.

The Museum thus concludes the celebrations for International Museum Day, which is commemorated on Monday, May 18. To complete the celebration, throughout the day, admission to the museum will be free during its usual hours, from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum will also join the celebration with a free day from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. in which you can visit the permanent collection, the Carmen Thyssen Collection and exhibitions such as ‘Hammershoi. The Listening Eye’, ‘Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk. Pedagogies of war’ or ‘Guercino and its biblical heroines’, in addition to the productions ‘Gaza, where life resists’ and ‘Rauschenberg: Express. On the move’.

The Thyssen has scheduled explanations in the room, guided tours and a concert by the Real Casino de Madrid Choir at 1:00 p.m., with free admission until capacity is reached.

NATIONAL HERITAGE

The Royal Collections Gallery will hold a special program of activities that will include visits to spaces usually closed to the public, meetings with experts on the permanent exhibition and conversations about the role of museums in today’s society. The Gallery proposes programming focused on dialogue, the exchange of knowledge and new ways of approaching cultural heritage.

Access will be free throughout the day and tickets will be distributed exclusively at the museum’s ticket offices. That same day, entry to the Royal Palace will also be free. The rest of the National Heritage palaces and monasteries will remain closed as the celebration coincides with Monday.

In addition, the Gallery will allow access to its warehouses of cultural goods, a restricted space, of great architectural and heritage interest. Visitors will be able to discover how these spaces are organized, what storage systems are used and what the main preventive conservation measures are. The activity will have two passes, at 12:00 and 17:00.

The special programming on the occasion of International Museum Day will continue until May 19, with a new session of ‘Conversations in the Gallery’, organized in collaboration with the Tatiana Foundation.

STATE MUSEUMS

On the other hand, the 16 state museums of the Ministry of Culture join the commemoration of International Museum Day, which is celebrated every May 18, and the 22nd European Night of Museums, on May 23, with a program of activities under the motto ‘Museums uniting a divided world’.

The celebration includes special opening hours, conferences and numerous activities. In addition, in this edition there will be days of free entry, days in which they will extend their hours with night openings, guided tours and access to unusual spaces.

In fact, several museums have organized special visits led by experts and professionals from the institutions themselves. For example, the National Museum of Decorative Arts proposes the ‘Inside Out Marathon. The museum collection with its professionals’.

It will also be possible to access spaces usually closed to the public, such as the warehouses of the National Museum of Roman Art and the Museum of America, where most of their collections are kept, since only around 10% of the collections are permanently exhibited. For its part, the National Archaeological Museum will allow you to visit its photographic collections.

On the other hand, the MAN proposes an activity around hospitality tesserae, used in the Iberian Peninsula more than 2,500 years ago to seal pacts of friendship, as well as the drawing contest ‘Pieces that connect the world’. Meanwhile, the Museum of America invites you to discover the popular festivals of the American continent with the workshop visit ‘Partying for America’, while the National Museum of Sculpture organizes the theater workshop ‘Building bridges’, aimed at young people from 14 years old.

Among the activities are the period dance workshop ‘The viral dance of The Bridgertons: fiction and reality’ at the Museum of Romanticism.

Music will also be present in the recitals at the National Museum of Ceramics and Sumptuary Arts ‘González Martí’, which will be offered in collaboration with the Professional Conservatory of Music of Valencia. Afterwards, the program is completed with various scenic proposals and dramatized visits, such as ‘The Lost Treasure of Captain Coral’ at the National Museum of Underwater Archeology (ARQVA).

MAPFRE FOUNDATION

Another institution that will celebrate the artistic anniversary is the Mapfre Foundation, which will extend its opening hours at its Madrid headquarters until 11:00 p.m. next Saturday, May 16. In addition, starting at 8:00 p.m., access will be free for all visitors, allowing more people to enjoy the exhibitions: ‘Anders Zorn. Travel the world, remember the land’ and Helen Levitt.

In this way, the institution seeks to raise awareness of the fact that “museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace between peoples.”