Museo Reina Sofia: Still Not Done Right, But Done Better

A year ago, we spent our first few days in Spain in Madrid. My natural goal was to share of the highlights and secrets (as I know them) with Lisa. El Prado? Check. La Plaza Mayor? Check. La Puerta del Sol? Check. And so on. On our list was the Museo Reina Sofia, but we didn't quite get that one right. The Reina Sofia is a modern art museum with a notable collection of works by Picasso, Miró, Dalí, among others. Being a modern art museum, it is full of the whimsical and inexplicable. I believe that the most famous work at the Reina Sofia is Picasso's "Guernica." This Wikipedia link gives an excellent overview of the painting, but in general, this painting was Picasso's response to Franco teaming up with Hitler to allow the German airforce to practice dive bombing techniques on a live (and defenseless) population during the Spanish civil war.

A year ago, like all good tourists, we visited the Reina Sofia. Our big mistake was that it was a Monday evening about an hour before closing. I think we paid roughly 10 Euros each to enter (equivalent to roughly $28 at the time). Our primary goal was to see "Guernica," but we got distracted along the way. Just as we were getting close, about 15 minutes before closing time, they started shooing everyone out of the museum. We tried to swim upstream against the flow of exiting patrons, but eventually security stopped us and made us leave, only a few rooms away from our target. This was a good lesson in how not to spend your money while on vacation.

This year, we would not make the same mistake. Having hit most of the big Madrid sights a year ago, this year, we were able to focus on the Reina Sofia immediately upon arrival. Better yet, on Sunday's it's free! Don't worry, we still made plenty of financial blunders this year as well, but at least we got to see "Guernica" as planned.

Here are some pix from the Reina Sofia from both this year and last year. I think the hanging sculpture of the guy hanging from his teeth is really cool. Like most casual admirers of art, I'm dumbfounded by the blue canvas, but I think that such minimalist odes to abstraction are required in modern art museums even if I can't understand them.


From 2009: The Atocha trainstation at sunset just outside of the Reina Sofia.



From 2010: All modern art museums require some sort of wild sculpture at the entrance.



From 2009: The hanging sculpture in the stairway. A favorite of mine.



The inexplicable blue painting.



A more interesting, but still inexplicable blue sculpture.



Let's hang some household junk from the ceiling and then challenge you to not call it "art."



These are propaganda posters from the Spanish Civil War. Having read extensively on this subject, I find these quite interesting.


Here's a Dalí followed by some detail shots of the same work:






Another Dalí. I'm not really sure if these are safe for work or not.


Picasso.



When we got to "Guernica," we joined about 80 others visitors and took non-flash photos of the painting. I took several shots, including some detail shots, just for fun. When taking photos in most art museums (assuming you're allowed to take any photos), the light is usually so poor that you cannot take a decent photo. Any sensible person would just buy a postcard to get a quality shot of whichever painting strikes your fancy. Still, I like to take my own phots just for the fun of it. In this case, using my fancy-dancy super turbo-charged Canon with dual overhead cams. This must've singled me out from the rest of the point-and-shoot masses, because after a few photos, an attendant came to me and told me that photos were not permitted of this particular work. I was a little dumbfounded because there were 80 other people all taking pictures of this same painting. So I replied, "Pero todo el mundo está sacando fotos aquí!" (But everyone's taking pictures here!). She told me that she couldn't control everyone. Aside from the camera, I'm not sure why she picked me out of the crowd. After she spoke with me, I saw the little sign at the back of the gallery that indicated that photos were not allowed in that particular room. Honestly, I don't understand why cameras are permitted anywhere in museums of this caliber. On the bright side, I think my pix of Guernica, especially the two close-ups are acceptably decent. Here they are: