Spain Culture News
A wider perspective for 'Guernica' in the Reina Sofia
By h.b.
Apr 27, 2008 - 10:51 AM

The new Director of the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, Manuel Borja-Villel has announced changes in the gallery where Picasso’s famous anti-war painting ‘Guernica’ hangs.

The painting, which is now considered too fragile by experts to move, will stay where it is, but the gallery will be redesigned to allow a much wider perspective for those who view the work.
A total of 4,500 new square metres of gallery space is to be created with the reforms.

Borja-Villel has been in his post for four months and has been explaining some of his other plans for the modern art museum.
He wants to change the ticket structure which he says had been drawn up thinking only of tourists and those who do not work. He wants to take the museum closer to the public at large.

Picasso's 'Guernica' - Photo EFE

His assistant, the United States expert, Lynne Cooke, comes from the Dia Art Foundation in New York, and wants to see the reforms carried out, using this year’s budget of 58 million € without the venue having to close for a single day.

The famous iron sculpture from Richard Serra, ‘Equal-Parallel/Guernica-Bengasi', will be back on show at the museum from October – or at least it will be a copy of the work which was discovered to have gone missing from the museum in October 2005.