MONDAY, DECEMBER 17
A slow morning would lead to the discovery of one of our favorite European museums, the Reina Sofia. My bedroom was dark and quiet, and I was awakened from a dream of paintings and designs by an alarm. The museum was just up the road from us.
THE WONDERFUL MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFIA
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is an amazing museum, Spain’s national contemporary art museum and one of my favorite museums in Europe. The curators tackle contemporary issues and intellectual questions; they are not afraid. Chloe and I spent four hours in just one part of the Museum, barely scratching the surface and will return tomorrow night between 7:00 and nine when it is free. This enormous museum is housed in a neoclassical building located in Atocha, formerly a 16th C. hospital.
The museum is famous as the home of Picasso’s Guernica and contains modern and postmodern art. We spent a good 30 minutes in front of La Guernica, reading the description about this iconic painting of the devastation of war, the killing of women and children when the Germans, allies of the Spanish Fascists, bombed the town of Guernica in 1937, provoking Picasso to depict the tragic event. We also saw one of the best photographic exhibits I can remember, Spanish photographers from the 1960s and 1970s.
