Barcelona



After two years of closure due to architectural reforms, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies will reopen to the public at the beginning of March.

On 3 March, at 12 h, there will be an official inaugural function in the presence of the Right Honourable the President of the Generalitat de Catalunya, His Excellency the Mayor of Barcelona, the Honourable Culture and Media & Communications Councillor of the Generalitat de Catalunya, and the Culture Delegate of the Ajuntament de Barcelona; of Miquel Tàpies and Laurence Rassel, the staff of the Fundació; and the architect Iñaki Ábalos, from Ábalos+Sentkiewicz Arquitectos, responsible for the reform.

On 4 March, at 19 h, there will be a celebration of the reopening of the Fundació for professionals only.

On 5, 6 and 7 March, the Fundació will be open to the public free of charge, with guided visits and special activities (for more information, see Calendar of Activities, page 3).


Process of Reform of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies

The Fundació Antoni Tàpies closed its doors to the public in January 2008 to carry out an architectural renovation of the building. This renovation, by the firm of architects Ábalos+Sentkiewicz, has adapted the building to the new safety and evacuation regulations, and made it possible to meet the full needs of disabled people. We have also renewed the exhibition spaces in order to recuperate the industrial character of the building, and changed the entrance to the museum to improve the areas of reception and bookshop. The reform also includes the recuperation of the second floor of the museum (where the offices were) for public use, in order to create new spaces for activities and museum services (educational activities, archive and documentation space, multidisciplinary room, etc.), as well as being able to initiate new strands of programming.

For two months after the reopening of the Fundació, it will be possible to consult all the documentation on the architectural renovation of the building, its transformation into a centre of work, production and exhibition where all the spaces, programmes and processes are linked and interrelated. Together with this space for consultation, the Fundació will offer guided visits to the building's renovation (for more information, see Calendar of Activities, pages 3 and 4).


Antoni Tàpies. The Places of Art

The Fundació Antoni Tàpies will reopen with Antoni Tàpies. The Places of Art, an exhibition that includes works realised by the artist in the last twenty years (to coincide with the two decades of existence of the Fundació), and a selection of earlier works acting as counterpoints (namely works from the mid-forties) that can be seen as the seeds for his later production. The exhibition will also include a selection of works from the artist's private collection, a fragment of what he himself has named his 'manifesto' and his 'museum' [Antoni Tàpies, El arte y sus lugares (The Places of Art), Madrid: Siruela, 1999 >. This selection includes works ranging from Egyptian art to modern Western art, from ritual objects to scientific books, which are not only the habitat of the artist but are also linked to his particular way of conceiving art, and represent a heterodox questioning of its origins, history and meaning. The selection brings together pieces that have rarely, if ever, been seen in an exhibition space.


Activities around the Exhibition

Coinciding with the exhibition Antoni Tàpies. The Places of Art, the Fundació offers a range of activities to help discover or rediscover some of the creative forms that have accompanied Tàpies' aesthetic and ethical evolution, from cinema or music to writing. In this case, as well as guided visits, there will be a selection of films by Georges Méliès (1861-1938), one of the many filmmakers included in Tàpies' private film collection; the concert String Quartet No. 2, a six-hour piece by Morton Feldman (1926-1987); the presentation of the first volume of Tàpies' written works, A Personal Memoir. Fragments for an Autobiography (Complete Writings. Volume I), published in Catalan, Spanish and English; and a conversation between Uwe Fleckner and Juan José Lahuerta ('Primitive and Contemporary. The Collection of the Artist') that will help to analyse Tàpies' facet as a collector.

For more information, see Calendar of Activities, pages 3 and 4.

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Fundació Antoni Tàpies,
Aragó 255,
08007 Barcelona
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