International Museum Day 2021
The Future Is Behind
- Film and Video
- Encounter
- Seminars and Lectures
- Guided Tour
View of the Lavapiés neighbourhood from the Nouvel Building terrace, Museo Reina Sofía
Date and time
Held on 16 May 2021
In conjunction with International Museum Day, access will be free of charge on Sunday, 16 and Monday, 17 May. Book your free general admission here.
Once again, the Museo Reina Sofía participates in the annual International Museum Day —celebrated internationally since 1977 — under the 2021 slogan proposed by ICOM (the International Council of Museums) of “The Future of Museums: Recover and Reimagine”, and thus prompts a reconsideration of the idea of a living, open institution.
The notion of historical time as a dizzying, sped-up line of progress towards the future, and questioned by the current critical conditions and the perception of time at a standstill and repeated, forces us to rethink the meaning of museums, and their role, scale, evolution and future in order to deal with present-day challenges. Learning from other world views, those which conceive of a cyclical, spiralling time in which the past is ahead and the future is behind, contributes to a re-examination of where we are situated and the paths to imagine.
Therefore, in conjunction with International Museum Day, the Museo offers two days with free entry, on 16 and 17 May, in addition to a special programme of encounters, a film series, interventions, activations and guided tours.
In turn, the Museo once again joins Radio 3 to celebrate the day, offering, on Monday, 17 May, part of the station’s schedule from the rooms of the Collection.
Sponsor
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Monday, 17 May, 2021 – 12pm and 5pm Nouvel Building, Library and Documentation Centre
The Permanence of the Ephemeral. Documentation Around Performance
The Museo Reina Sofía Library and Documentation Centre organise an encounter that gets under way with a guided tour around their facilities, showing the different services on offer to visitors and presenting a selection of different materials from their artistic holdings, materials used to document performance art. The ephemeral, fleeting and short-lived nature of performance actions means that faithfully recording them presents a challenge for artists, institutions and publishers alike. Therefore, this activity sets forth a reflection and debate on the recording and archiving of these formats.
On the basis of these materials and in order to delve deeper into this problem, the encounter concludes with the collaborative action Añadir contacto (Add Contact), whereby the protagonists are the same attendees in the encounter. The action draws inspiration from a collaborative performance from Andrés Senra that took place on Facebook and subsequently materialised into an artist’s book.
Length: 75 minutes each session
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Tuesday, 18 May 2021 – 5:30pm Online platform
Dissent and Care. Reinventing the Museum
For decades now, the present and future of museums has been the source of perpetual public debate, in all likelihood on account of their capacity to configure narratives of collectiveness and conceive of new worlds. As a result, a large part of the tensions caused by culture wars crystallise in museums and stem from conflicts of economic, political and sensorial interests that cut through their foundations.
The debate today around their meaning, role, scale, evolution and future has intensified, to the extent that thinking about their legitimacy has become a question of survival. This encounter includes the participation of people involved in an array of museum institutions and situated in different contexts to share their experiences and projects.
Participants: Amanda de la Garza (director of MUAC, Mexico City), Elvira Dyangani Ose (director of The Showroom, London), Pablo Martínez (director of Public Activities at MACBA, Barcelona) and Mabel Tapia (deputy artistic director of Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid)
Moderated by: Ana Longoni (director of the Museo Reina Sofía’s Public Activities and Study Centre, Madrid)
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Sunday, 16, and Monday, 17 May 2021 Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Possible Futures. Cinema and Worlds to Come
This audiovisual series pivots on cinema’s future imagining with films made between 1920 and 2020, an historical expanse of one hundred years in which the future is manifested as an idea disputed between progress conceived as dogma, a radical critique of the present, and a yearning for new worlds. What are the imagined futures in the past and which future is projected and desired in our present?
Sunday, 16 May 2021 - 11:30am
Fritz Lang. Metropolis
Germany, 1926, b/w, silent, original version with intertitles in Spanish, restored digital archive, 152’Monday, 17 May 2021 – 6pm
Anton Vidokle. Immortality and Resurrection For All
Russia, 2017, colour, sound, original version in Russian with Spanish subtitles, digital archive, 34’―With a video presentation by Anton Vidokle
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From 16 May 2021 Sabatini Building, Floor 1 and Nouvel Building, Roof
Three Centuries of Care. The Architecture of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
TicketsThree centuries on from the birth of Francisco Sabatini, the architect behind the building that housed the former Hospital General de Madrid — Madrid’s General Hospital — and today the site of Museo Reina Sofía, this project of grand modernity which primarily sought to care and heal is substantiated. In their desire to evoke the original architecture and imagine possible responses to present-day challenges, the actions here are set out in two of the Museo’s spaces, shining a light on two temporal and typological conceptions of the architecture that co-exist inside:
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Sabatini Building, Floor 1
Illustrated Utopia. Plans for the Hospital General de Madrid project
This small show occasions a reflection on the infancy of the building from the perspective of the architecture, illustrated through plans of the eighteenth-century hospital displayed on the windows of the cloister on Floor 1, and thereby restoring a project of great architectural ambition and modernity, a project which, upon completion, would have constituted one of the largest hospitals in Europe. The plans bear witness to the colossal scale of the original project, of which only a third was ever built. Three centuries on, the updated value of these documents functions as an archaeology of the present, inside a context in which the role of the Museo is once again aligned towards care.
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Nouvel Building, Roof
Museums that have never been. The architectural transformation of the old hospital into a cultural space
This intervention brings back the space of original circulation in the interior of the Nouvel Building roof for the public. Inside this space, visitors can discover the architectural transformation of the old hospital into a museum by way of a sound installation with recordings that reproduce the voice and testimonies of professionals who have been decisive in fashioning the building’s identity and were key to its conversion into a museum in the 1980s, either in its creative genesis (via projects that never materialised) or through contributions to its execution. In the 1980s, considerations revolved around how to put the former hospital to use; today, the same reflection leads us to imagine the nature of the Museo’s next architectural intervention.
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Sunday, 16 May 2021 – 11am to 2pm Sabatini Building, Floor 1, Floor 2 and Garden
Torchbearer! Family activations in the rooms of the Museo
This proposal involves a series of actions and accompaniments in the rooms of the Museo that spark the curiosity of the youngest visitors. Rather than responding to a set itinerary or shaping a standard guided tour, these activations, spread out on Floors 1 and 2, as well as other spaces such as the Garden, illuminate different works in the Collection through an enquiring gaze.
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Sunday, 16, and Monday, 17 May 2021 Sabatini Building, Garden
Guided tours to exhibitions and to the Collection
TicketsSunday, 16 May 2021
10:15am–10:45am: Feminism. A Feminist Gaze on Avant-garde Movements
11am–12pm: Guernica. History of an Icon
1-1:30pm: Moroccan Trilogy. Memories of the Other ShoreMonday, 17 May 2021
11am-12pm: Feminism. A Feminist Gaze on Avant-garde Movements
1-1:30pm: Moroccan Trilogy. Memories of the Other Shore
4–4:30pm: Everything but the Same Old Thing. Modernity and Avant-garde
5-5:30pm: Feminism. A Feminist Gaze on Avant-garde Movements
6:15-7:15pm: Moroccan Trilogy. Memories of the Other Shore![Anglada Camarasa, Sonia de Klamery (echada) (Sonia de Klamery [Lying]), 1913 (ca.)](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/legacy_programs/feminismos-peq_1.gif "Anglada Camarasa, Sonia de Klamery (echada) (Sonia de Klamery [Lying]), 1913 (ca.)")
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Monday, 17 May 2021 – 12pm and 5:45pm Sabatini Building, Restoration Department
Restoration workshop guided tour
The Restoration Department organises a visit around its workshop to offer insight into the restoration process on Juan Gris’s work Portrait of Madame Josette Gris (1887–1927) from the Collection.
One of the Department’s restorers will offer an in-depth explanation of the different analysis methods used in the intervention, as well as the processes that have been carried out in order to conserve the work properly. For instance, they will describe the gigapixel studies with visible light, raking light and ultraviolet light, and infrared digital photography — technology which enables digital high-resolution images to be captured, outlining details that cannot be picked up by the naked eye — methods that have contributed invaluable information to gain extensive knowledge of the work. It has also enabled the undertaking of adding reversible elements to the frame, granting prior and subsequent protection of the paint, with a temperature control system and relative humidity, which will be vital when moving the painting in the future.
Length: 30 minutes per session
Department of Conservation and Restoration, sponsored by the MAPFRE Foundation
The restoration work has been funded with the help of a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project
![Juan Gris, Portrait de Madame Josette Gris [Portrait of Madame Josette Gris], 1916](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/legacy_programs/juan_gris.png "Juan Gris, Portrait de Madame Josette Gris [Portrait of Madame Josette Gris], 1916")
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Monday, 17 May 2021 – 6pm to 8pm Sabatini Building, Room 207 and online platform
Special programme with Radio 3
Online platformThe Museo Reina Sofía once again joins Radio 3 to celebrate International Museum Day. On this occasion, Room 207 will play host to a series of live performances which will be streamed live and direct on the Radio 3 website. The programme includes participation from Ángel Stanich, La Bien Querida, Mikel Erentxun, Rozalén and Sidonie.
Length: 20 minutes per session
Más actividades
![Céline Sciamma, Naissance des pieuvres [Lirios de agua], 2007, película](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ciclocine-piscinas-3.jpg.webp)
Céline Sciamma. Water Lilies
Friday, 10 July 2026
Céline Sciamma’s directorial debut, Naissance des pieuvres,depicts the emotional and sexual awakening of three teenagers around an indoor swimming pool in a Parisian suburb. Marie, a fifteen-year-old introvert, becomes fascinated by Floriane, the charismatic captain of a local synchronised swimming team. Driven by this attraction, Marie tries to get closer to her while observing the complex dynamics of desire, friendship and power that develops between the young girls. At the same time, Anne, one of Marie’s friends, has her own experience of insecurity and affective search, shaped by the pressure to fit in and belong. As the relationship between the three intensifies, contradictions surface between the image they outwardly project and their real feelings.
Standing away from the common places on adolescence, Céline Sciamma explores first love, burgeoning queer identity and the uncertainty of desire with an intimate, observational gaze, resulting in a sensitive and honest portrait of a time of transformation, in which each gesture leads to the passage from childhood to adulthood.
Sofia Coppola. Somewhere
Saturday, 11 July 2026
Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), a famous Hollywood actor, lives a life of pleasure in Hotel Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, drifting aimlessly between vacuous relationships, punctuated by film shoots and commercial duties. Cleo (Elle Fanning), his eleven-year-old daughter, stays with him for a few weeks due to her mother’s absence, forcing him to rethink his life.
Sofia Coppola’s employment of swimming pools is carefully considered in the film — blue water in Somewhere is the only place where Marco can recover the meaning of his existence as the pool acts as a womb in which he finds balance. While living with his daughter Cleo and the reflection of these aquatic moments — diving under water, floating, playing or simply sunbathing with no real purpose — everything happens. Thus, Coppola explores in depth themes such as fame, loneliness and the complexity of human ties, putting forward an intimate and profound portrait full of the subtleties of life.
Jonathan Glazer. Sexy Beast
Friday, 17 July 2026
Gal Dove (Ray Winstone), a criminal for the British mafia, lives happily retired with his wife in an idyllic villa in southern Spain and a dazzling swimming pool. Their peace is shattered with the arrival of Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), a former gangster and criminal associate who wants to convince him to do one last job.
If a swimming pool can be at the heart of suspense, then Sexy Beast is the quintessence. The reflection of blue water in Gal’s idyllic seclusion symbolises the artificial paradise that can be broken at any time. This first feature-length film by British director Jonathan Glazer (also the director of The Zone of Interest, 2023) starts with one of the most striking swimming pool scenes, a symbol for the impending danger about to reach this whitewashed haven of peace. The perfect vision of recreated beauty — luxury pools on the Andalusian coast — which, in the depths of pristine water, conceals an unsettling fear of returning to the past.
![François Ozon, Swimming Pool [La piscina], 2003, película](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ciclocine-piscinas-6.jpg.webp)
François Ozon. Swimming Pool
Saturday, 18 July 2026
Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling), a frustrated English writer paralysed by writer’s block, is invited by her editor to spend a few days in her summer house in the south of France. While there she meets Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), the editor’s uninhibited daughter. The young girl’s hypersexuality clashes with Morton’s cold nature, an initial hostility which turns into a fascination with the private life of the young girl, serving the writer as inspiration for her new novel and tugging the story to an ambiguous game between truth and imagination.
Being in crisis is wanting to be another person. Sarah wants to absorb the vitality of her young host, a process of metamorphosis triggered by the swimming pool. The pool is the film’s central character, the place where Julie shows her naked body and amorous acts, sending Sarah into a state of agitation. Through the pool and its water, the writer drinks in Julie’s wild passion. The aquatic enclosure thus acts as catharsis: the place where the subconscious of the writer flourishes, enabling her to unleash her creativity and free her fantasies. At the same time, water distorts the image, blurring fiction and reality; ultimately, the necessary medium to keep art afloat.
![Jean Vigo, Taris, ou la natation [Taris, rey del agua], 1931, película](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ciclocine-piscinas-7.jpg.webp)
Leni Riefenstahl. Olympia, Part 2. Festival of Beauty and Jean Vigo. Taris, Swimming Champion
Friday, 24 July 2026
The body in water as an object of ideology. This is one of the major themes of the 1930s and this session, where Nazism and Anarchism dissolve into two different swimming pools. Two great films of counterposed ideologies which have gone down in history as examples of film’s power to represent a vision of the world. In Olympia, Part 2. Festival of Beauty, Leni Riefenstahl films the Olympic Games of Berlin in 1936, organised during the Third Reich. The camera leaves the athletics stadium to show the repertoire of modern sports — fencing, polo, cycling, pentathlon — before culminating in the Olympic pool with Adolf Hitler as the host, where the beautiful, disciplined, classical bodies of the swimmers bring to mind, as Susan Sontag wrote, the visual fascination that characterised fascism. Meanwhile, Jean Vigo, the son of an exiled Spanish anarchist, films French Olympic champion Jean Taris in a funny, playful exercise, where the swimming pool becomes a field of play without rules and where avant-garde film-making elements of the 1930s materialise, such as slow motion, superimposed images and dynamic editing. Two avant-garde films, two films on opposite poles that show, for a time, swimming not as an object of pleasure or desire, but as a space of contest from which to demonstrate the power of the twentieth century’s great ideologies.