Nearly 10,000 people visit 'The bet on new art'

Nearly 10,000 people have passed through the Museum of History of Girona to visit the exhibition L'aposta per l'art nou. Itineraries of the avant-garde in Catalonia through the Rafael and María Teresa Santos Torroella fund, which closed its doors last Monday, September 11, after ten months of exhibition. The exhibition opened on October 29, 2022.

The exhibition presented a selection of the most outstanding and representative works from the art collection and archive of Rafael and María Teresa Santos Torroella. This was the first exhibition of the Cycle of Contemporary Art Exhibitions which, between 2022 and 2024, aims to make known three significant collections of the artistic heritage of Girona City Council, which constitute the funds of the future Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Catalonia in Girona.

"From the very beginning, we committed to taking the Santos Torroella collection out of storage and making it available to the public, because we believe that the cultural and artistic heritage of our city should be available to everyone. People's response, as always, has been very positive", said the Deputy Mayor and Councilor for Culture, Quim Ayats.

The exhibition, which has had a very positive recognition in surveys of visitors, is not only the testimony of the life and intellectual career of one of the most relevant figures of the Catalan and Spanish artistic scene of the second half of the 20th century, but it also shows us a journey through the paths of the avant-garde in Catalonia from its origins to the 1960s.

Apart from the exhibition, a series of conferences and debate tables have been organized at the same time, where relevant figures from art criticism and the history of art in our country have participated: Francesc Fontbona, Àlex Mitrani, Anna Capella, Eudald Camps, Fanny Estela, Alex Susanna, Artur Ramon, Josep Playà, Joan Boadas and Anna Pujols. All the sessions have been recorded, and are available on the MHG website: https://web2.girona.cat/museuhistoria/cat/expo_artnou_recursos.php

In the digital field, several actions have been carried out to support the exhibition. A catalog has been published about the exhibition of the Rafael and María Teresa Santos Toroella Art Fund and Archive-Library, which can be consulted online . The Art and Documentary Funds have also been digitized and a specific web resource has been created for the exhibition . On the other hand, we are working on the generic website of the Art Fund, which will collect the contents, the works, and the analyzes of the 3 exhibitions of the cycle and which will soon be available to everyone who wants to consult it.

Finally, a digital resource has been created that makes it possible to visit the exhibition virtually and which gives the possibility to take the same route as the face-to-face exhibition and consult works, documents and texts that were in the exhibition.

The exhibition has been curated by the historians and art critics Rosa Gutiérrez Herranz and Jaume Vidal Oliveras, who have also acted as guides to the exhibition. On the other hand, scheduled visits have been carried out for schools, university groups or groups of cultural and artistic interest, some of which have also been carried out in sign language, to make them accessible to people with hearing impairments .