Reina Sofia Museum Rearranges its Collection and Shows it in a Different Way

Picasso’s 'Woman with flower vase', in its new location at the Museo Reina Sofía, where today, the collection was presented in a new order. Photo: EFE/J.J. Guillén

MADRID.- “The story we propose is more like The Thousand and One Nights than War and Peace”. With this graphic example the head of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia referred to the reorganization of the museum’s collection which will open to the public today, including free entry from Friday through Sunday. One and a half years after starting his job at the museum of contemporary art, Manuel Borja-Villel, has made a complete turn around and now the museum’s collection shows modern art in a new way and starts off with works made by There will no longer be a linear exhibition of works of art, by date, creator and theme, but what there will be is a scheme where relations and connections will allow us to see movies made by Buster Keaton and Luis Buñuel together with the works made by Goya, Solana and Picasso and also African art, which so inspired the artist from Malaga.

“Active spectators” are required for this new Reina Sofia, willing to arrive at their own conclusions and to get closer to art by proposals in the historic context, wider and denser.

Photography, cinema, posters and installations are shown equally with paintings and sculptures and as essential to the modernity which they layed the foundations for.

Visitors are invited to “navigate” with the help of new electronic signs and to be the protagonists of an adventure that demands walking through 8,000 square meters that the new collections takes up. It is distributed throughout the four floors of the Sabatini building and the two that were recently remodeled by Jean Nouvel. More than 1,000 works of art, from the 17,290, that the museum owns, are shown. These have been distributed in 38 halls and of these 1,000 works, 400 had been stored in a warehouse, with 137 totally new works that were recently acquired. On view are: 265 paintings, 90 sculptures, 230 works on paper, 299 photographs, 12 installations and 50 audiovisuals.

The undisputed icon continues to be Guernica, by Picasso, which has substantially improved its exhibition conditions. There are also works on loan from the Lorca Foundation –several drawings by the poet- and from the National Library and the Prado.