If one of your resolutions for 2023 is to put more culture in your life, Articket gives you the perfect excuse to enjoy a year of great exhibitions that include major artists and topics for every taste. Commemorations such as the Picasso Celebration, the 100-year anniversary of Antoni Tàpies’ birth, or the Anglada Camarasa Year will mark the artistic agenda, together with contemporary creative talents such as Laura Lima and other iconic figures such as the Marquis de Sade. Not to mention what’s on tap for children, or ultra-timely topics such as artificial intelligence.
Miró-Picasso, one of the highlights of the year
There has been attractive programming prepared on an international scale as a result of the Picasso Celebration, which commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s death. This autumn will see the inauguration in Barcelona of the anxiously-awaited exhibition Miró-Picasso, a coproduction of the Fundació Joan Miró and the Museu Picasso which, for the first time, are simultaneously organizing and hosting an exhibit in both venues. In Miró-Picasso we will see the intense friendship maintained between these two artists and understand their link to Barcelona. Its result is the legacy they left the city in the form of their two monographic museums. A must-see in 2023!
More essential anniversaries: Anglada Camarasa and Tàpies
We recently learned that the family of the artist Hermen Anglada Camarasa has given his archive to the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his death. The exhibition Anglada Camarasa. The premeditated archive, which can be visited starting February 10, will be a unique occasion to get a glimpse of the multi-faceted personality of the best internationally known Catalan artist between Marià Fortuny and Joan Miró, through his personal documents. The show will link the archives with a selection of his works and will enable us to discover Anglada Camarasa’s creative process and the relevance of his work.
In this context, the Museu Nacional and the Museu Picasso will pool their knowledge and resources to organize an International Symposium around archival practices in art in the 21st century. Archivists, curators, artists, historians and researchers from around the world will be in attendance on March 16 and 17.
This year we are also celebrating the centenary of the birth of Antoni Tàpies, a milestone that well deserves magnificent programming. The commemorative acts will begin in December 2023 and continue through December 2024. At the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, they are preparing an exhibition with close to 90 of the artist’s works, seldom seen in Barcelona. It will occupy the whole building and is curated by the foundation’s first Director, Manuel Borja-Villel, together with the foundation’s curator, Núria Homs.
The Marquis de Sade, beyond the clichés
The CCCB is well-known for programming excellent exhibitions on writers and thinkers. This year, in May, they are offering us a new exhibition on the Marquis de Sade that will break with clichés about the libertine writer: Sade: Freedom or Evil. The curators, Alyce Mahon and Antonio Monegal, want to explore his often-controversial legacy and reveal his impact on popular and queer culture, as well as among intellectuals such as Foucault, Adorno and Simone de Beauvoir.
Current topics: the perception of everydayness, artificial intelligence and more
With its usual aim of subverting dynamics and shaking up “normal” exhibition narratives, the MACBA suggests we reflect on the perception of everyday life, with the exhibition Balé literal by Brazilian artist Laura Lima. A show that we can enjoy starting May 18, where objects and paintings will be hanging from the threads of an installation created especially for the occasion, although at the same time they will make reference to works produced throughout the artist’s career. An unusually choreographed retrospective exhibition in continuous movement.
And in the fall, the CCCB will also take a moment to reflect on Artificial intelligence, a topic on everyone’s lips lately. The exhibition will trace its history, starting with the first imaginings of artificial intelligence. It will analyze different influences on AI’s evolution, whether anthropological aspects of ancient civilizations or human beings’ drive to scientific experimentation. How similar is AI to human intelligence? Can it really learn? And if so, how? Is it creative? Is it sustainable? This exhibition will shed light on these and many other questions.
New acquisitions for the Gothic art collection of the Museu Nacional
Lluís Borrassà and the Cathedral of Barcelona will reveal the latest additions to the museum’s Gothic art collection: the panels of the Profession of Saint Peter the Martyr and the Beheading of the Relatives of St. Hippolytus. Acquired by the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya and entrusted to the Museu Nacional in 2020, the addition of these two paintings is particularly significant because of their remarkable artistic value and also because they originally were part of two magnificent altarpieces in the Cathedral of Barcelona.
Contemporary art for children, too!
Contemporary art changes constantly. New artists appear, new languages are constructed, materials become more diverse and new discourses are created. Imaginary friends will be an interactive exhibition enabling visitors of all ages to enter the world of contemporary art in a kind, fun and welcoming way, as if it were a space for play and discovery. The exhibition, which will start March 16 at the Fundació Joan Miró, is designed to escort the public on a voyage of discovery where they can familiarize themselves with renowned artists, encouraging them to lose their fear of contemporary art. A wonderful activity for the whole family to enjoy!
