The future museum promoted by Carmen Thyssen is beginning to emerge in the city. It does so with a discreet gesture, but full of symbolism: its first exhibition space open to the street. Starting this Monday, a space next to the historic Cine Comedia will display a first piece of the cultural project that is called to transform the emblematic building into a new artistic hub of the city (and beyond). It will not be a conventional room: the exhibition will be observed through the glass, from the street ---but not just any street, but right on Paseo de Gràcia, like a cultural showcase open to passers-by.
The location is not accidental. Until now, that small space had functioned as an additional display window for the Guess store, located next door and which maintains its activity without any change ---the space was just a display window, with no access to the store---. Today, its white walls and open interior are transformed into the first visible gesture of a museum that is still in the gestation process, with the forecast that it will open in 2028.
The initiative has been promoted under the name Un Lienzo en Blanco (A Blank Canvas), as a metaphor for the project itself. In this space, the seats of the old cinema artistically intervened by students from Barcelona schools will be exhibited on a rotating basis. Each week a different piece will be shown, created by students from centers such as Elisava, EINA, IED or Escola Massana.
The seats are part of an artistic project that was presented in November inside the cinema. Now, the goal is to literally take it to the street, and make it visible to the entire city. Thus, if that presentation was a first rehearsal in a closed space, this new showcase represents the museum's first real contact with the people of Barcelona.
New emerging talent
In addition, the project anticipates one of the axes that wants to mark the identity of the future museum: its relationship with the new generations of artists. The exhibition focuses on the city's emerging talent and collaboration with the main local art schools, offering young creators the opportunity to display their work in one of Barcelona's busiest streets.The small exhibition space that now opens as a cultural window will eventually be integrated into the future museum when the architectural project of the old cinema is completed. For now, it will function as a visible preview of what is to come.
An invitation to look
The transformation of the Comedia Cinema into the Carmen Thyssen Barcelona Museum is one of the most ambitious cultural projects underway in the city. When it opens its doors, the museum aims to reinforce the cultural axis of Paseo de Gracia and expand the museum offerings in the center of Barcelona, as a pole of cultural attraction not only for the city, but beyond.Meanwhile, the museum also begins to be built outside its walls. And it does so with a simple gesture: a seat, a glass, and an implicit invitation to look. A first step, modest but symbolic, of a project that wants to be part of the city's cultural life, even before opening its doors.