As La Vanguardia reported this morning, the Stoneweg investment fund has finally decided to buy the building that until a little less than a year ago housed the Comedia cinema in Barcelona, with the aim of making it the headquarters of the future Carmen Thyssen museum in Barcelona. an initiative that was announced last May by both the Baroness and her partners in the real estate fund, with Swiss and Andorran capital.
Although initially Stoneweg’s intention was to take over the rental of the property, and an agreement was reached for 65 million euros for 25 years, in the end the consortium has decided to opt for the purchase for a value between the acquisition and the works. of space adaptation, exceeds 100 million euros. Sources from the operation have explained to La Vanguardia that, after the purchase, the project will start without delays until its inauguration.
The announcement that Baroness Thyssen wanted to establish a permanent headquarters in Barcelona for part of her collection raised eyebrows last spring both in the public cultural sphere and in the media. At first it was assumed that the future museum would house the part of the collection referring to Catalan painters, but there are doubts about whether Thyssen has enough Catalan works to create a museum attractive to the public, since it was revealed that it would be a private museum.
Collboni celebrates the agreement
There was speculation that Carmen Thyssen would like to recover the paintings she lent in 2012 to the MNAC (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunua), a transfer with which she has repeatedly been dissatisfied, considering that her collection deserves a more prominent room. Asked about this, last Monday Pepe Serra, director of the MNAC, declared that the museum “does not need Baroness Thyssen’s works at all to be the museum it is today,” thus making it clear that he was not worried that Cervera wanted to recover his paintings. “Maybe we are the ones who have to leave pictures for her,” he replied.
However, and beyond the debate about private museums in Barcelona, which are proliferating in the heat of the good tourist response, both municipal and regional authorities are satisfied with the purchase, since it is the signature of the project. According to Europa Press, the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, has stated that he sees “great news for the city” in the agreement to open the museum in the old Comedia cinema.
He considered that the new museum will represent a “qualitative leap” at a cultural level for the city’s museum offering and for the center of the Catalan capital. According to Collboni, the new museum will reinforce Barcelona’s position as a cultural capital by coinciding with the future expansions of the MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona) and the MNAC. For her part, the Minister of Culture of the Generalitat, Sònia Hernández, has also celebrated the initiative, and has trusted that “it will not be detrimental” to the commitment of the Thyssen space in Sant Feliu de Guíxols (Girona).
A collection spread across several museums
Carmen Cervera’s idea of having her museum in Barcelona, the city where she lived in her childhood and youth (she was born in Sitges) actually has a long history. In 2012 he showed his intention to donate between 600 and 700 works from his collection to the Generalitat of Catalonia. In the heat of rumors of the expansion of the MNAC and the creation of a “museum hill”, his wish was for the Catalan institutions to create a “Carmen Thyssen headquarters” on the Montjuic site.
But the baroness put a price on the project and wanted the Catalan Government to pay a significant, unspecified amount for the donation. Finally, the idea did not bear fruit due to the magnitude of the project, its cost and the context of the economic and social crisis of those years. This, together with the discontent, declared on more than one occasion by the baroness, regarding the treatment that the MNAC gave to her collection, unleashed rumors about the intention to create a private museum for it.
Currently, Carmen Thyssen, which has a large collection of Catalan art from the 19th and 20th centuries, has museums in Malaga and Andorra, as well as an exhibition space in Sant Feliu de Guíxols (Girona) and works at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation of Madrid and the aforementioned MNAC, which currently keeps 27 pieces.
Among them stand out The cathedral of the poorby Joaquim Mir –one of the few works to which the director of the MNAC attributes capital importance–; Ferit chopperby Marià Fortuny; Outdoor interiorby Ramon Casas, as well as canvases by Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa, Joaquim Sunyer and Santiago Rusiñol, and a collection of more contemporary art that includes work by Tàpies, Torres García, Cuixart and others. Currently all of these works remain in the museum, in a specific room that recognizes the collector, on a free transfer basis.
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