MYSTERY TOUR

Good Morning!

Gary was the "social director" for today.  We got up and set out.  I was clueless regarding where we were going--until we got there!  It was a wonderful surprise--The National Museum of Art (NMAC).  It is enormous and we were only able to spend time in the Romanesque galleries and look at a few other famous pieces.  We also were able to go to the roof top and see incredible panoramic views of Barcelona.  It was a humid and cloudy day--hazy.  Still gorgeous.  Gary's photos are featured today!

Love and Hugs,

Ellie and Gary

The Museum is just off The Placa de Espanya--a popular and historic area of Barcelona.

Here is the official site:  http://www.museunacional.cat/en

A bit of information on the museum.  Source:  Wikipedia

The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (Catalan pronunciation: [muˈzɛw nəsiuˈnaɫ ˈdard də kətəˈɫuɲə], English: "National Art Museum of Catalonia"), abbreviated as MNAC, is the national museum of Catalan visual art located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Situated on Montjuïc hill at the end of Avinguda de la Reina Maria Cristina, near Pl Espanya, the museum is especially notable for its outstanding collection of romanesque church paintings, and for Catalan art and design from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including modernisme and noucentisme. The Museum is housed in the Palau Nacional, a huge, Italian-style building dating to 1929. The Palau Nacional, which has housed the Museu d'Art de Catalunya since 1934, was declared a national museum in 1990 under the Museums Law passed by the Catalan Government. That same year, a thorough renovation process was launched to refurbish the site, based on plans drawn up by the architects Gae Aulenti and Enric Steegmann, who were later joined in the undertaking by Josep Benedito. The Oval Hall was reopened in 1992 on the occasion of the Olympic Games, and the various collections were installed and opened over the period from 1995 (when the Romanesque Art section was reopened) to 2004. The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (Museu Nacional) was officially inaugurated on 16 December 2004.^[1]

Romanesque Gallary

It is one of the most important and outstanding collections in the Museum, due largely to the series of mural paintings it includes. Indeed, the Museu Nacional Romanesque Collection is unmatched by that of any other museum in the world. Many of the works here originally adorned rural churches in the Pyrenees and other sites in Old Catalonia, or Catalunya Vella, as it is known; they began to be discovered and studied in the early 20th century, particularly after a Pyrenean expedition in 1907 by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (Institute of Catalan Studies), which later published Les pintures murals catalanes (Catalan Mural Paintings). Years later, the news emerged that a group of foreign financiers and antiquarians had block-purchased most of these paintings to be taken to the United States of America. Although there were no laws in Spain at that time to forbid the expatriation of art, the Junta de Museus (Catalan Board of Museums) was able to successfully intervene in order to rescue, dismantle and transfer works to the Museum of Barcelona (1919–1923), then housed in the Parc de la Ciutadella, thus conserving and protecting these Romanesque works, considered a completely unique piece of art heritage and also a symbol of the birth and formation of Catalonia.^[2]

BELOW:  Columns outside of the MNAC

BELOW:  These towers were designed to resemble similar towers in Venice

BELOW:  The La Sagrada Familia

BELOW:  The frescos from the Romanesque Gallery

BELOW:  Alter piece from the Gothic Gallery

BELOW:  Most of Picasso's paintings are in the Picasso Museum.  This is one of the few that is housed in the MNAC.

BELOW:  From the Modern Art Collection

BELOW:  Roof top view of the main Olympic Stadium (1992 Olympics)