MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFIA AND THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, TO COLLABORATE ON RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION PROJECTS
At a ceremony in Madrid on July 15, José Guirao Cabrera, Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and Glenn D. Lowry, Director of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, signed an agreement announcing their desire to collaborate on research and conservation projects. The two museums will also work together to publish and share the results of those projects with their colleagues throughout the art world, in addition to organizing seminars, symposia, and conferences.
Mr. Lowry said, "Studying the techniques and materials of modern artists is one of the keys to understanding--and preserving--modern and contemporary art. We at The Museum of Modern Art are delighted to work with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia as partners toward this goal."
The Reina Sofia and MoMA have long enjoyed a cooperative relationship. In recent years, four exhibitions organized by MoMA have traveled to Madrid: Jasper Johns: A Print Retrospective (1987), Liubov Popova (1991–1992), Latin America: Video News (1993), and Fernand Léger (1997-1998). In addition, in 1998, the Reina Sofia's Head Conservator, Pilar Sedano Espin, spent time in residence at MoMA's Department of Conservation, which is led by Chief Conservator James Coddington. Anny Aviram, Conservator of Paintings at The Museum of Modern Art, also participated in a seminar organized by the Reina Sofia in La Habana, Cuba this past year. This staff exchange program will continue.
About the Reina Sofia
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia houses one of the world's most important collections of twentieth-century art. Since its inception, the collection has grown to include more than 13,000 drawings, paintings, sculptures, engravings, photographs, and design objects. The collection comprises works by influential Spanish artists such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Juan Gris, and Salvador Dalí, in addition to works by international artists Alexander Calder, Yves Klein, Donald Judd, Le Corbusier, Max Ernst, and Bruce Nauman, among others.
The Museo Reina Sofia is located in a historic building. In the second half of the 18th century, architect Francisco Sabatini was commissioned to design a new hospital. Sabatini was not able to complete the building and only part of the original plans was executed. Since then, various alterations and additions were made to the site. It was declared a Historical Artistic Monument in 1977, and final alterations were made in 1988.
In May 1986, the building opened as the Centro de Arte for temporary exhibitions. Over a decade later, in 1990 the Centro de Arte was renamed the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (MNCARS), and in 1992, Their Majesties King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia inaugurated the permanent collection of the Museo Nacional.
About MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art has the foremost collection of twentieth-century art in the world. From an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing given at its founding in 1929, the Museum's collection has grown to include more than one hundred thousand paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, architectural models and drawings, and design objects. MoMA also owns some fourteen thousand films and four million film stills, as well as more than two hundred thousand books, artist books, and periodicals.
The Conservation Department, established in 1959, is dedicated to the preservation and study of MoMA's collection. In recent years, the department has established a scientific research program, dedicated to the study of materials and techniques of artists in the collection. The department is also committed to the education of new conservators of modern art, an emerging discipline within the field of conservation as a whole.
Today, The Museum of Modern Art is visited by some 1.8 million people every year, who come to see its art collection as well as to attend temporary exhibitions, film programs, and special events. A still larger public is served by the Museum's ambitious national and international programs of circulating exhibitions, its active publishing program, its library, and its educational activities, including its Web site, www.moma.org.
