Advertising banners with paintings by Picasso and Sorolla have been hanging from the museum facades for weeks.
In 2023, the two artists are celebrating their anniversary, so their work will be dissected in as many versions as there are exhibitions on the programming of these artistic institutions.
This will also be the year in which art galleries will have to review their seams, that is, their collections, their archives, the cartouches of their paintings, and once and for all face the challenge of decolonization.
three birthdays
Several people next to the portrait of Manuel Bartolomé Cossío, by the Valencian painter Joaquín Sorolla, in the Prado Museum. Sergio Pérez (EFE)
It only takes one commemoration for the temporary borders that divide the collections of classical and contemporary museums to be blown up (once again).
For this reason, on the 50th anniversary of Picasso's death, his work will be in the Prado, the Reina and, of course, in the museums dedicated to the artist in Malaga and Barcelona.
His legacy will be analyzed to the millimeter, although what seems to remain open is the debate of to what extent or in what way the recurring and sharp feminist criticism of the creator should be addressed.
Sorolla competes in the limelight on the 100th anniversary of his death.
The so-called light artist, who went against the current of the avant-garde at the beginning of the century, will also be dedicated to the Prado, the Sorolla Museum and the Royal Palace with a kind of immersive exhibition.
In the case of Tàpies, whose name day is celebrated at the end of the year (December 13), the schedule is yet to be confirmed.
The decolonization of museums
One of the pieces that the Vatican returns to Greece, the horse's head, which comes from the western pediment of the building. HANDOUT (AFP)
A few days before the end of 2022, Pope Francis launched a missile at the waterline of the British Museum when announcing that he was returning to Greece three fragments of Parthenon marble that have been preserved for centuries in the Vatican Museums.
The decision is closer to a
marketing
operation than to a real agreement between States that could set a precedent for other museums, but it has had great repercussions at a time when the English institution and the Greek Government are negotiating the possibility that the pieces of this set return to their country of origin.
In Spain, Miquel Iceta, Minister of Culture, has insistently reiterated that from his portfolio "there is no plan or order for the decolonization of museums."
However, the pressure on art galleries increases every day that their European and American counterparts announce a return, as happened with the Benin bronzes from Germany to Nigeria.
At the moment it is unknown who will be in charge, if that moment arrives, of the decolonization of the Reina Sofía Museum.
Manuel Borja-Villel's mandate ends on January 20th after 15 years at the head of the institution.
In the world of art, the first movements are already intuited.
The Museum Board of Trustees decided on November 28 that the selection process to search for a new director will be convened on February 1, 2023. The current director can reapply.
Vermeer, the great exhibition of the year
Work 'The lane' by Johannes Vermeer, kept in Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam, Netherlands.rijksmuseum
Despite being one of the most famous signatures of his time, the painter Johannes Vermeer (Delft, 1632-1675) fell almost into oblivion after his death and only about 35 of his works are known today, according to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
In the competitive world of large exhibitions, the room is preparing the largest retrospective dedicated to the artist in its history, with the help of the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague.
The Netherlands preserves only seven works by Vermeer, and the exhibition hopes to bring together, "for the first and last time", all the paintings distributed throughout the world that are in a condition to be transferred.
Another museum for Madrid
Interior room of the Gallery of the Royal Collections of Madrid (not yet completed).
The Royal Collections Gallery, a new museum in Madrid, will open in the summer of 2023 next to the Almudena Cathedral, with works of art belonging to National Heritage.
The space will have 40,000 square meters, of which 9,000 will be for exhibitions, for paintings, sculptures, floats, photographs, watches, engravings, musical instruments, by artists as prominent as Goya, Velázquez, Tiziano and Caravaggio.
Activism or vandalism
Environmental activists stick to the frame of 'La maja desnuda' and 'La maja vestida' by Francisco de Goya, at the Prado Museum, in November 2022. REBELLION OR EXTINCTION (Europa Press)
Activists against climate change have turned museums into the staging area for their protests by attacking paintings by highly relevant authors in different parts of the world.
These actions have garnered more rejection than awareness.
Even so, as they announced at the end of 2022, in the year that begins they threaten to continue with their particular campaign and emulate Mary Richardson, who in 1914 slashed the
Venus in the mirror
by Velázquez to call attention to the hyperexposure of the bodies of the women. women in museums
A type of activism that the Guerrilla Girls would take up again years later.
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