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
-
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
-
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)
-
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
-
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:
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.)")
-
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")
-
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
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
Christian Nyampeta and the École du soir
13, 14, 15 NOV, 11, 12, 13 DIC 2025
Christian Nyampeta is a Rwandan artist, musician and film-maker whose work encompasses pedagogies and community forms of knowledge production and transmission. His Ècole du soir (Evening School) is an art project conceived as a mobile space of collective learning and is named in homage to Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), a pioneer of African cinema who defined his films as “evening classes” for the people, a medium of education and emancipation through culture.
This block is made up of three double sessions: the video work of Christian Nyampeta, the films of École du soir and one of Ousmane Sèmbene’s feature-length films. Nyampeta will introduce all three first sessions.
Long Live L’Abo! Celluloid and Activism
4, 5, 6 DIC 2025
L’Abominable is a collective film laboratory founded in La Courneuve (Paris, France) in 1996. It came into being in response to the disappearing infrastructures in artisan film-making and to provide artists and film-makers with a self-managed space from which to produce, develop and screen films in analogue formats such as Super 8, 16mm and 35mm. Anchored in this premise, the community promotes aesthetic and political experimentation in analogue film opposite digital hegemony. Over the years, L’Abominable, better known as L’Abo, has accompanied different generations of film-makers, upholding an international movement of independent film practices.
This third segment is structured in three sessions: a lecture on L’Abo given by Pilar Monsell and Camilo Restrepo; a session of short films in 16mm produced in L’Abo; and the feature-length film Une isle, une nuit, made by the Les Pirates des Lentillères collective.
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.
![Carol Mansour y Muna Khalidi, A State of Passion [Estado de pasión], 2024, película](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/palestine%20cinema%20day%202.jpg.webp)
Palestine Cinema Days
Sábado 1 de noviembre, 2025 – 19:00 h
The Museo Reina Sofia joins the global action in support of Palestine with the screening of A State of Passion (2024), a documentary by Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi. The film features in Palestine Cinema Days Around the World, an annual festival, held globally every November, which aims to show films made in Palestine to an international audience. The initiative was conceived as a form of cultural resistance which seeks to give a voice to artists from Palestine, question dominant narratives and create networks of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Palestine Cinema Days Around the World originates from Palestine Cinema Days, a festival organised in Palestine since 2014 with the aim of granting visibility to Palestinian cinema and to support the local film community. In 2023 the festival was postponed because of the war in Gaza, and has since become borderless in scope, holding close to 400 international screenings in almost sixty countries in 2024. This global effort is a show of solidarity with Palestine and broadens the voices and support networks of the Palestinian people around the world.
A State of Passion exposes the atrocities committed against the Gaza population via the testimony of Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, a Palestinian-British plastic surgeon living in London who decides to return to Gaza and save lives in the city’s hospitals amid the Israeli army’s indiscriminate bombing of the population. A necessary film exposé of the experience of unrelentingly working twenty-four hours a day for forty-three days in the Al Shifa and Al Ahli Hospitals in the city of Gaza.