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CULTURE

‘Extraordinary’ museum of censored art opens in Spain

A crucified Ronald McDonald clown, prayer mats adorned with stilettos and sketches by former Guantanamo prisoners take pride of place at a new museum in Spain devoted to previously censored art.

Visitors look at
Visitors look at "Smiling Copper" by British artist Banksy, at the Forbidden Art Museum in Barcelona on October 26, 2023. The new museum opened on October 26 and features 42 censored works from around the world. (Photo by LLUIS GENE / AFP) 

The private Museum of Forbidden Art, which opened to the public in Barcelona on Thursday, features 42 works from around the world that have been denounced, attacked or removed from exhibition.

Works by artists such as Spanish master Francisco de Goya, US cultural icon Andy Warhol and Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei are spread over two floors.

The objects are part of a collection of 200 such works belonging to Tatxo Benet, a Catalan businessman.

While they push boundaries and often sparked controversy, Benet said this was not enough to be included in the museum, located in the centre of the Catalan capital, one of the world’s most visited cities.

“We don’t collect or show scandalous or controversial works in the museum. We show works in the museum that have been censored, assaulted, violated, banned,” he told AFP.

“Works that have a history behind them, without that history they wouldn’t be here,” he added.

Spanish journalist and art collector Tatxo Benet gestures at the Forbidden Art Museum in Barcelona

Spanish journalist and art collector Tatxo Benet gestures at the Forbidden Art Museum in Barcelona on October 26, 2023. – (Photo by LLUIS GENE / AFP) 
 
‘Always have a place’

Many works deal with religion, such as Finnish artist Jani Leinonen’s “McJesus” of a Ronald McDonald sculpture crucified to a wooden cross, which was withdrawn from a museum in Israel.

The museum also showcases a photograph of a crucifix submerged in the urine of New York artist Andres Serrano, which was vandalised during an exhibition in France and sparked an uproar when first shown in the United States in 1989.

Another highlight is a work by French-Algerian artist Zoulikha Bouabdellah featuring 30 Muslim prayer mats, each adorned with a pair of sequinned stilettos, which was pulled from an exhibition in France in 2015 following complaints from a Muslim group.

Benet, one of the founders of Spanish multimedia group Mediapro, said he started building his collection in 2018 when he bought an installation called “Political Prisoners in Contemporary Spain”.

Visitors look at "McJesus" by Finnish artist Jani Leinonen, at the Forbidden Art Museum in Barcelona

Visitors look at “McJesus” by Finnish artist Jani Leinonen, at the Forbidden Art Museum in Barcelona on October 26, 2023.  (Photo by LLUIS GENE / AFP)

It consisted of black-and-white photos with pixellated faces of people who had broken the law, among them Catalan separatist leaders who faced legal action over a failed 2017 secession bid.

The work, by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra, was pulled from a Madrid art fair just two hours after Benet bought it. It is now on display at another museum in the Catalan city of Lleida.

The museum also displays paintings and sketches by former prisoners at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, including one of the Statue of Liberty submerged in water with only the hand holding a torch and top of the crown visible.

The US government ordered that art made by inmates at the detention centre would have to be destroyed when they are released after an exhibition of works in New York in 2017 sparked controversy.

“Any artist who can’t show their work because someone prevents them from doing so is an artist who is censored, and therefore will always have a place in this museum,” Benet said.

‘Amazed’

Benet was speaking a few metres from a self-portrait of late US artist Chuck Close, known for his massive photorealistic portraits.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington gave up dedicating an exhibition to Close’s works after several women accused him of sexually harassing them several years earlier when they came to his studio to pose.

Benet said having so many controversial works together caused visitors’ “levels of tolerance to widen and the level of scandal of the work to be lowered”.

Corinna Dechateaubourg, a 56-year-old German who was visiting from Hamburg on the exhibition’s opening day, said she kept looking up more information on the works on her mobile phone.

“I’m amazed, it’s extraordinary, it’s really interesting,” she told AFP.

Montserrat Izquierdo, a 67-year-old Spaniard, said “it is good to be able to see what is forbidden, what you are not allowed to see normally”. 

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CULTURE

Barcelona to have its own Thyssen museum

The Catalan capital will soon have its own Thyssen art museum on the central Paseo de Gracia avenue, joining cities such as Madrid and Málaga.

Barcelona to have its own Thyssen museum

The Thyssen-Bornemisza is one of Madrid’s most prominent art galleries, known as one corner of Madrid’s Golden Triangle of Art, along with the Prado and the Reina Sofía, and houses part of the Carmen Thyssen private collection. Another branch of the Museo Carmen Thyssen opened in Málaga in 2011.

Now, a new museum with artwork owned by Baroness Thyssen, Carmen Cervera, is set to open in another of Spain’s most artistic cities – the Catalan capital of Barcelona.

The museum will be made up of pieces from Cervera’s extensive private collection. One of the world’s most important art collectors, the baroness, who was born in Barcelona, told newspaper La Vanguardia that having a museum here would be the best way to pay homage to her home city.

“To be able to host a significant museum in my city of Barcelona, showcasing some of the finest works of Catalan art is the best legacy I can leave to future generations,” she told the newspaper.

Cervera and investment firm Stoneweg made a bid for the city’s iconic Comedia cinema, located on the corner of Passeig de Gracia and and Gran Via, to be turned into the museum.

Sources say that the current agreement has been signed for 25 years, meaning that the rest of the baroness’s private collection, currently rented out to galleries and exhibitions around the world, will now have a home.

Cervera already had plans to move part of her collection to Barcelona in 2012 in the Fira de Barcelona at the foot of Montjuïc, but ultimately the project failed and since then she has been keen to find a new home in the city.

The plan is that the museum will house part of her art collection, as well as various cultural activities.

The Comedia cinema showed its last film in January of this year after screening the latest movies for six decades and has remained empty since then.

The owners received many proposals and ideas for transforming the venue but ultimately decided to go with the new Thyssen art museum.

Currently, the baroness, who has a large collection of Catalan art from the 19th and 20th centuries, has museums in Málaga and Andorra, an exhibition space in Sant Feliu de Guíxols (Costa Brava) and works in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation in Madrid. 

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