1000 Places to See: #125 Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (Barcelona)

I love that their sticker is the skyline of their building.

When I Google-mapped how to get to this museum the directions were crazy intimidating. When I finally looked at the museum website it gave directions for arriving "on foot" which were basically, "Hey, you know this metro stop? Walk just up the street a little bit and there we are!"

What they fail to mention is the approximately 1 million stairs that lead from street level to the museum.

What they do not fail to mention is that there are "electric stairs". HOORAY!

The plaza leading to the musuem is called "Placa de les Cascades" - aptly named, no?

And when you finally arrive at the museum you find out that the entrance tickets are good for two days. HOORAY! This was especially good news because they have really excellent seating - and I hadn't seen a comfortable place to sit in weeks!

*I may have fallen asleep sitting here.

The architecture is amazing!

And best of all - you can take pictures (no flash) almost everywhere in the museum. I didn't discover this fact until I was through the section of the oldest art work so I don't have pictures of that, but let me tell you about it.

The Medieval/Romanesque Collection is primarily a collection of mural paintings, the majority of which come from Romanesque churches in the Pyrenees. The were bought and moved to the museum mainly to prevent them leaving the country. Basically, within this wing of the museum they have basically recreated dozens of churches and attached the frescoes to the new walls. It is really incredible to see. This is the only collection of its kind in the world.

The museum is beautifully curated - creating interesting visuals throughout the space and various collections.

And some of my favorite pieces:

Le mort de Cleopatra
c. 1804

Conjunt factici amb la Deposicio de Crist I el Cami al Calvari
1500

Salvador
1434-1435

Sant Pere|sant Paul
1590-1600

Perseguint la il-lusio
1902

A saint-Mammes. Sol de juny
1892

Confident (Double sofa)
c 1904-1906 (Gaudi)

Els llendoners de Boquer
c.1918

Retrat de Thor Lutken
1892 (Edvard Munch)

Munch painted this portrait of an Oslo lawyer out of gratitude for his services. The painting came to Barcelona via a descendant of the subject of the portrait, the Norwegian consul-general in this city. This work was done shortly before he painted The Scream and Madonna, two of his most famous paintings, in which he becomes, in his own words, an “anatomist of the soul”. This portrait, on the other hand, was done in an apparently more conventional, decorative style, with flat brushstrokes, akin to art nouveau. The symbolist scene, almost imperceptible in the bottom half of the painting, gives us a glimpse of his particular world view.