The defiant and cultureta tradition of Barcelona residents has the habit of receiving any urban project or economic initiative with the typical dismissive facial frown and a "we'll talk" that usually hides an "in principle... no." This is what happened with the controversial arrival of the Hermitage museum franchise in the city's port, a cultural facility that the City Council already received with many reservations (in Barcelona we have the grace of suffering a Podemos-led administration that has already spent quite a few years in the pulpit and in the official car, but which we cannot describe as "caste" because the mayor gets offended) and, in fact, it was the council itself that commissioned fellow philosopher Josep Ramoneda to write a report titled "Barcelona does not need the Hermitage," a 21-page document (written in a hurry, full of elementary spelling mistakes and with contributions from museum directors Judit Carrera, Marko Daniel and friend Pepe Serra) in which the former foreman of the CCCB stated that "at this point (January 2020), the Hermitage does not have a museographic project worthy of this name," dismissing the invention as a mere opportunistic commercial satellite and another prototype of the McDonaldization of art.
That Barcelona's left, suckled by the PSC, gets finicky is not new and, ultimately, it's a classic of the city that our intellectuals only praise the arrival of a new cultural infrastructure... when it is directed by themselves. Indeed, one has every right to consider that the Hermitage is not based on a solid artistic project, which is strictly true, that it seeks a much less intellectual audience than the spectator who would spend hours admiring a Calder installation at the Miró Foundation while rehearsing a metaphysical thesis on the mysteries of gravity, which is also true, and can even write a thousand and one pamphlets on how the Hermitage model would end up having little impact on Barcelona's artistic fabric. All this is true, and we already know that capitalism has always excited the fantasy of critical theory (what would philosophers do without criticizing the reification of art and lamenting the death of its aura in Anagrama's books?); but it is equally true that the international projection of a city also requires globalized and banal infrastructures that, without causing attacks of singularity, place it on the urban map of the champions and generate movement of money.
I have always found phrases like "Barcelona doesn't need the Hermitage" amusing, because they hide the traditional conservative pedantry of the progressives. Indeed, Barcelona doesn't need the Hermitage, in the same way that it could subsist without the MNAC, the Auditori, the TNC, the Fabra i Coats... and would continue to breathe without the private rooms of Via Veneto or the tables of Xampanyet. To not need, Barcelona needs nothing; neither the Icub (and the civil servants who have been working there for decades earning not inconsiderable salaries), nor the advertising campaigns in which Mayor Colau reminds us how good chard is. Barcelona could survive being the urban garden surrounded by cute little houses that its progressive intelligentsia has always dreamed of, but it turns out that there are infrastructures that can place it as a pole of economic attraction; I don't give a damn about the Hermitage's art collection and, surely, I will completely ignore its absurd temporary exhibitions, but if these attract a somewhat more passable tourism than that of flip-flops and, incidentally, cause some visitors to end up immersed in the CCCB or eating at Dos Pebrots, then go ahead.
Barcelona could survive being the urban garden surrounded by cute little houses that its progre intelligentsia has always dreamed of, but it turns out there are infrastructures that can place it as a pole of economic attraction.The Port of Barcelona council has acted righteously by saving the City Council's slowness and granting the construction license to the Russian facility which, like everything Russian, the traditional nitpickers of the tribe must consider an armed wing of dictator Putin. It has done well because, had it not taken drastic measures, the City Council would have convened debates, symposiums, press conferences, and campfires to delay the project for years, ultimately exhausting its promoters (communism acts like this; like any totalitarianism, it wins by exhaustion). Alsothe Gran Teatre del Liceu has done very well, which, with a touch of opportune initiative, has expressed the possibility of forging agreements with the Hermitage that would be very useful for improving its educational project, finding spaces where contemporary dance and music could be performed more and better, or even chamber concerts. In fact, the Hermitage could be a fantastic opportunity for Barcelona to honor its tradition and have a second opera house (of the Principal type, with about 500-700 seats), optimal for programming late-Renaissance, baroque, and even contemporary repertoire that is now impossible to stage under optimal conditions.
The Hermitage could be a fantastic opportunity for Barcelona to honor its tradition and have a second opera houseUltimately, the future integration of the Hermitage into Barcelona's cultural fabric will also depend on the willingness of its infrastructures to establish agreements, as is the case with all museums in the world. I understand that the usual "carcoprogres" are more interested in a type of cultural direction, the one they have championed for decades, which, to be kind, has been anything but transparent.A server, I insist, is little interested in the Hermitage project(my museum has been, is, and will be the Frick, with that delightful little room where the Vermeers spend their existence conversing among themselves during the unparalleled tranquility of New York noons), but the project can open many more doors in the city than close them. In fact, if the City Council suffers for the viability of the artistic project and, with all the reason in the world, does not want what happened in other cities on the planet where the initial idea of a museum ends up being converted into hotels and establishments where the noble art of money laundering is practiced in a shoddy way, the best thing it could do is get involved, fight for its artistic direction to be co-tutored by the administration, and thus tie its responsible parties so that the project is much more porous, complex and less of a showcase.
But to do all this, look, one would have to work, which is not usually excessively liked by the members of our "yes-we-can" council and its court of old socialist puretas for whom cultural projects are only of interest when they are their mandarins. Yours truly, as you know, looks at things with much more parsimony, with the dagger always ready in the soul to mock the invention, but far from that habit so typical of the tribe consisting of living in perpetual indignation.