The dreamed museum of Carmen Thyssen in Barcelona begins to take shape

The dream of Carmen Thyssen in her hometown begins to take shape on Passeig de Gràcia. The comprehensive rehabilitation of the old Marcet Palace, which until January 2024 housed the Comedia cinema, already has a completion date: during the second half of 2028, when the Carmen Thyssen Museum of Barcelona will open its doors. The cultural facility, with noucentisme and modernism as protagonists, aims to recover the city's most creative spirit, attract and retain cultural talent, and consolidate the city on the international art map.

This was announced by representatives of the project's promoting company, Stoneweg Places & Experience, at an event promoted by Barcelona Global at La Pedrera, which brought together more than 200 representatives from the city's business, cultural, and institutional worlds. The president of Barcelona Global, Ramon Agenjo, recalled from the auditorium of La Pedrera that "cities that bet on culture always become better cities," assuring that the new museum "is born with the vocation of adding quality and uniqueness, generating and retaining impactful cultural talent, and projecting our city internationally."

"Barcelona needs to recover that spirit that made it the Barcelona of wonders," remarked the managing director of Stoneweg Places & Experiences, Joan Manuel Sevillano, during the event, recalling the 1929 International Exhibition that took place in the Catalan capital. Sevillano emphasized that the Carmen Thyssen Museum wants to contribute to the recovery of this more creative spirit of the city.

Stoneweg Places & Experiences promotes this new cultural facility through the Arte y Legado Barcelona Foundation, chaired by the CEO and co-founder of the Hispano-Swiss investment fund Stoneweg, Jaume Sabater, and which also includes Baroness Carmen Thyssen Cervera, as well as her daughter Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Cervera. It will not be the first time that the investment fund, and specifically its division Stoneweg Places & Experiences, intervenes in the city, as it has also been responsible for the rebirth of the Palau Martorell or the creation of the America's Cup interpretation center.

In this case, the Museu Carmen Thyssen project will involve the comprehensive rehabilitation of Palau Marcet, a historic building on Passeig de Gràcia, built in the late 19th century and altered by reforms it underwent during the 20th century. The rehabilitation, signed by the architecture studios Casper Mueller Kneer Architects and OUA, will preserve the entire neoclassical exterior facade and original roofs, and will recover heritage elements such as the large triangular atrium, which will once again be the heart of the building and act as a grand open entrance to the city.

Once rehabilitated, the new facility, with an area of about 9,000 square meters, will feature two lower floors dedicated to 19th and 20th-century Catalan art, upper spaces for temporary exhibitions, and an auditorium. With this distribution, 19th and 20th-century Catalan art will be the central axis of the facility, with Modernist and Noucentist painting as the main protagonists, "one of the great unknowns of Catalan culture," as Sevillano remarked. Thus, the permanent collection will include works by Ramon Casas, Eliseu Meifrèn, or Santiago Rusiñol, among others, and an unprecedented selection from the Carmen Thyssen Collection.

This emphasis on artistic heritage will also mean that the cultural offering will be primarily aimed at the Catalan public, with programming designed from a local approach, combining training, curatorship, and educational activities. At the same time, however, the museum aims to improve the quality of cultural tourism and consolidate Barcelona as a top-tier destination for international art. Thus, another of the project's great ambitions is to connect the Catalan capital to the international circuit of major temporary exhibitions, alongside London, Paris, Madrid, or New York.

Likewise, Lluís Sans, president of the Association of Friends of Passeig de Gràcia, also present at the event organized by Barcelona Global, highlighted that the new museum will also reinforce "the role of the promenade as a cultural and vital axis of the city, alongside the quality cultural offerings of other facilities such as La Pedrera, Palau Robert, or Casa Batlló."