Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

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Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Edificio Sabatini. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.jpg
Established September 10, 1992; 32 years ago (1992-09-10)
Location Madrid, Spain
Visitors 3.2 million (2013)[1]
Ranked 12th globally (2013)[1]
Director Manuel Borja-Villel[2]
Website www.museoreinasofia.es
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Native name
Spanish: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
MNCARS 05.jpg
Location Madrid, Spain
Official name: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Type Non-movable
Criteria Monument
Designated 1978[3]
Reference no. RI-51-0004260

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS, also called the Museo Reina Sofía, Queen Sofía Museum, El Reina Sofía, or simply The Sofia) is Spain's national museum of 20th-century art. The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992 and is named for Queen Sofía. It is located in Madrid, near the Atocha train and metro stations, at the southern end of the so-called Golden Triangle of Art (located along the Paseo del Prado and also comprising the Museo del Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza).

The museum is mainly dedicated to Spanish art. Highlights of the museum include excellent collections of Spain's two greatest 20th century masters, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí. Certainly the most famous masterpiece in the museum is Picasso's painting Guernica. The Reina Sofía collection has works by artists such as: Juan Gris, Joan Miró, Julio González, Eduardo Chillida, Antoni Tàpies, Pablo Gargallo, Pablo Serrano, Lucio Muñoz, Luis Gordillo, Jorge Oteiza and José Gutiérrez Solana.

International artists are few in the collection, but there are works by Pierre Bonnard, Vasily Kandinsky, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Magritte, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Diego Rivera, Lucio Fontana, Mark Rothko, Yves Klein, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, Donald Judd, Damien Hirst, Julian Schnabel, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Gabriel Orozco, Clyfford Still, Cindy Sherman, cubist still lifes by Georges Braque and a large work by Francis Bacon.

Along with its extensive collection, the museum offers a mixture of national and international temporary exhibitions in its many galleries.

It also hosts a free-access library specializing in art, with a collection of over 100,000 books, over 3,500 sound recordings and almost 1,000 videos.


History of the Building

Courtyard in old hospital building
Jean Nouvel Building interior

Hospital

The building is on the site of the first General Hospital of Madrid. King Philip II centralized all the hospitals that were scattered throughout the court. In the eighteenth century, King Ferdinand VI decided to build a new hospital because the facilities at the time were insufficient for the city. The building was designed by architect José de Hermosilla and his successor Francisco Sabatini who did the majority of the work. In 1805, after numerous work stoppages, the building was to assume its function that it had been built for, which was being a hospital, although only one-third of the proposed project by Sabatini was completed. Since then it has undergone various modifications and additions until, in 1969, it was closed down as a hospital.

Art Museum

Extensive modern renovations and additions to the old building were made starting in 1980. The central building of the museum was once an 18th-century hospital. The building functioned as the Centro del Arte (Art Center) from 1986 until established as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 1988. In 1988, portions of the new museum were opened to the public, mostly in temporary configurations; that same year it was decreed by the Ministry of Culture as a national museum. Its architectural identity was radically changed in 1989 by Ian Ritchie with the addition of three glass circulation towers.

Expansion

An 8000 m2 (86,000 ft2) expansion costing €92 million designed by French architect Jean Nouvel opened in October 2005.

Photo gallery

  • Close up of the front of the Reina Sofía in Madrid Spain.

  • Reina Sofía Museum

  • Interior gallery photo inside the Reina Sofía Museum

  • Inside the Reina Sofía Museum

Popular culture references

The museum features, as a major protagonist, in Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control (2009).

In 2003 Spanish film Noviembre, the school entrance scenes and some performance scenes were shot in the square in front of the museum.

See also

References

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External links

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Top 100 Art Museum Attendance, The Art Newspaper, 2014. Retrieved on 15 July 2014.
  2. ↑ New Director named
  3. ↑ Database of protected buildings (movable and non-movable) of the Ministry of Culture of Spain (Spanish).
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