Free activities in Barcelona during summer!

Whatever you’re into, you can enjoy summer to the full in Barcelona! Even if you’re on a budget, there are many free activities this August.

Outdoor cinema buffs can head to the CCCB in the Raval for the annual “Gandules” cycle, which this year complements the contemporary culture centre’s intriguing exhibition on labyrinths.

Films such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville or David Lynch’s Lost Highway are screened from Tuesday to Thursday at 10pm. Get there early to grab a sandwich and a seat.

For the ideal combination of art and air conditioning, check out one of the many free exhibition centres in town. They include the Caja Madrid Espai Cultural in Plaça Catalunya, Gaudi’s Pedrera, and Palau Robert on Passeig de Gràcia, which takes you on a tour of the Mediterranean. Caixa Forum on Montjuic explores the work of internationally renowned Majorcan artist Miquel Barceló.

What’s more, other museums and galleries waive their entry charge on Sunday afternoons, including the Picasso and the nearby Design museums in the Born, or the CCCB and the Virreina photography space in the centre.

For those that prefer to be outdoors, the many lovely parks in the city offer a shady haven from the heat, and a very special experience at night, set the scene for free concerts in classical music, jazz and sarsuela.

And if you’re in party spirits don’t miss the lively and colourful street celebrations in Gràcia, in the third week of August, and Sants in the last week, with their extravagant street decorations and live bands in the evenings.

http://www.vimeo.com/13913483

Barcelona 2159: the city in the future

Over 300.000 Barcelona residents and some of the city’s top creators have tried to imagine what the city will be like in 2159, leaving their testimony in a time capsule for storage somewhere in the city in a few months’ time.

We spoke to Öwn, Kolectivo Huevo Frito and Mosi Mosi, three creators who work in the city and wanted to take part in the Barcelona 2159 initiative, creating the Barcelona of the future in small video clips.

Kolectivo Huevo Frito think men will destroy the environment but they will never be able to destroy the world because it will continue with other civilisations. The survival of nature is precisely what they feature in a video made with animated paper figures where the Eixample disappears and gives way to a green city.

Mosi Mosi, meanwhile, have taken the most frequently recurring jokes among city residents to imagine the future Barcelona: a Sagrada Família that is still not finished, there will be Winter Olympic Games and we will always, always have the sea.

Barcelona 2159 has already devised the 2 metre high stainless steel capsule with a glass container to store these videos, messages sent to the website and the email address, and the videos recorded on the video machine going round the city.

Courbet exhibition at Museu Diocesa

Paintings, drawings, engravings, photographs, documents and personal objects. In all, there are 100 items in “Courbet, between Nature and Culture”, the first major exhibition in Spain dedicated to the father of realism: Gustave Courbet.

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (1819 – 1877) was a French painter  who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social commentary in his work.

You can visit this exhibition at Museu Diocesa. It offers an all-round view of Courbet’s character, both as an artist and a democratic activist. It also highlights his relationship with Catalonia and Spain, and the influence his ideas had on other artists, like Picasso and Miró.

The exhibition features masterpieces such as “Le Chateau de Chillon” or “Portrait d’homme d’apres Velazquez” and many landscapes of Normandy.

Where: Museu Diocesa
Av. Catedral, 4 (next to the Cathedral)
When: Until September 5th, 2010.

Loop Barcelona. Videoart Festival

For eleven days, Barcelona will be the great international showcase of video art. Loop Barcelona - now in its 8th year - hosts its most extensive programme ever, featuring over one thousand videos in some hundred venues located throughout the city. 

In a restaurant, in a bookshop and even in a flat specially rented for the occasion, video art comes to the whole city for eleven days of Loop Barcelona, the most important international event in visual creation in existence.

Artists presenting works include Michael Snow, Perejaume, John Baldessari, Miquel Barceló, Isabel Coixet, Eulàlia Valldosera and Bill Viola.

Among the videoforums that have been prepared, you might find yourself inspired by a meeting with film director Hannah Collins, who has a joint project with Ferran Adrià, or by seeing what television arts presenter Jef Cornelis has to say.

You can also see Miquel Barceló’s live creation of a piece of art at the Museu de Ceràmica de Barcelona.

More inf@: Loop Barcelona

Roxy Music at Sonar Barcelona

British band Roxy Music will be performing at the next Sonar, thirty years after they last played in the city. Other groups joining the line-up are New Young Pony Club, Cabo San Roque and Aufgang. Find your hotel in Barcelona.
 

Dance pioneers with the song “Angel Eyes”, they made synthesisers fashionable, were the precursors of punk and new wave and the standard-bearers of glamour on stage. Roxy Music is a band ahead of their time, which is why they are going to play at Sonar.

Sonar, the advanced music and multimedia art festival, takes place in Barcelona every year during three days in June. Sonar’s diverse artistic offer splits between the Sonar by Day activities and Sonar by Night, together with some simultaneous gigs like the performances at L’Auditori.

Together with Roxy Music, Sonar 2010 will also feature The Chemical Brothers, Delorean or The Pinker Tones among others.

Núñez i Navarro Hotels offers you nine hotels in Barcelona, centrally located, next to Sonar by Day venues and well connected to Sonar by Night premises.

More inf@: Sonar 2010 website

Don’t shoot the pianist

The Maria Canals International Music Competition of Barcelona was founded in 1954 by the pianist Maria Canals and her husband, the writer Rossend Llates. This Competition has achieved international prestige since it was accepted by the World Federation of International Music Competitions in 1958.

It is held at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, being endorsed by the World Federation of Music Competitions for the organization of the branches of piano, violin, singing, cello, chamber music, guitar, percussion and flute. Since 1954, the Competition has held over 110 branches, with over 7.000 participants from 100 countries and 180 jury members from all over the world.

The 56th Barcelona Maria Canals International Music Competition will bring together 91 pianists from 26 countries between 13 and 26 March. At the same time, the Off-Competition will be taking piano music to the public.

Maria Canals Competition wants to take advantage of the presence of so many prestigious pianists in the city to take piano music out to the public. More than fifty pianos will be spread around the city so everyone who wants to can play the piano in some very unusual places.

Green spaces, squares and streets will provide the setting for concerts aimed at everyone, children and adults, professionals and amateurs, with grand pianos installed so the participants in the competition can take their art to every corner of the city. Rambla del Raval, Plaça de Sarrià, Can Brians prison and the Line 2 metro station lobby in Plaça de la Universitat are some of the improvised “concert halls” for these young artists.

Tradicionarius: International Folk Festival

The Tradicionàrius International Folk Festival takes place for the 23rd time, featuring nearly 50 artists, seven album presentations and four new shows that will fill the CAT stage with folk songs and rhythms while including other city venues.

Once again Tradicionàrius wants to make local traditional music and culture more accessible to city residents, without abandoning its aim to evolve and expand. So, until 26 March, Barcelona will be moving to the rhythm of folk.

More inf@: Tradicionarius Website

Art on the Street with August Rodin in Barcelona

Art on the street (”Art al Carrer“), an initiative organised by the La Caixa Social Work Foundation with the City Council, is back in Barcelona for the third time. It has previously put on two exhibitions, on Manolo Valdés and Igor Mitoraj.

Rambla de Catalunya will become an outdoor museum from Friday 18 December to 6 February 2010 .

And this will be courtesy of the exhibition Art al carrer. Auguste Rodin a Barcelona, which is putting seven sculptures on display from the Musée Rodin in Paris, including The Thinker.

The exhibition was officially opened by Barcelona’s Mayor, Jordi Hereu, in the company of Eixample’s District Councillor, Assumpta Escarp, the secretary-general of the La Caixa Foundation, Lluís Reverter, and the director of the Musée Rodin in Paris, Dominique Viéville.

Rodin’s exhibition includes the famous work The Thinker and six studies of the six leaders making up The Burghers of Calais. You can see it on the Rambla de Catalunya, between Carrer Consell de Cent and Carrer Diputació.

Source: www.bcn.es  |  NN Hotels: www.nnhotels.com

MNAC celebrates 75 years

MNAC is 75 years old and is celebrating this by inviting everyone over to its open evening. It will take place thoday Friday 18/12 and visitors will be able to enter its permanent and temporary exhibitions for free. What’s more, there will be talks on some of the museum’s works and live music.

From 7 pm to 12 am, visitors will be able to see for free both its permanent exhibitions and the temporary exhibitions, Guests of Honour and The Wise Princess. The Santa Caterina de Seu d’Urgell Paintings, organised by MNAC and the Museu Episcopal de Vic.

In addition, the museum will also be offering live music by the Rino Dixie Band, from the Taller de Músics, in the Sala Oval. And there will be talks on the most important items in the permanent collection.

Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya - www.mnac.es
C/Mirador Palau Nacional, 6 - Sants-Montjuïc

BAC! 09 - The Barcelona Contemporary Art Festival

The Barcelona Contemporary Art Festival BAC! 09 opens Pandora’s box. At least, this year’s date with international creation is subtitled “Pandora’s Boxes“. An ironic title, as we won’t find all humanity’s ills there, rather an assertion of feminine art, but without any of the clichés normally associated with it.

Neither social criticism nor discourses on gender discrimination; the sixty-or-so female artists whose works are on display in BAC!’s main exhibition at the CCCB, free of charge, prefer humour, irony and a fresher perspective.

This is what we find in Ariadna Arnés’s photos, in Hanamaro Chaki’s illustrations and Bárbara Sánchez Barroso’s embroidery. You can be sure to find installations and videoart there too, such as those by Marta Jiménez Salcedo and Ms Woolman.

One of the highlights of this tenth BAC! is the section entitled “BAC! CAM“. This will feature one of the fullest retrospectives on women’s videoart.

To be more specific, the programme called “Indomitable Women” reviews female videoart over the last forty years, from the field’s pioneers like Maya Deren, celebrity names like Yoko Ono and Joan Jonas, up to more recent creators like Dora García, among others.

X Festival Internacional Barcelona Art Contemporani - BAC Pandora’s Boxes  - website Festival
From01/12/2009 to 03/01/2010
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB): C/Montalegre, 5

NN Hotels: www.nnhotels.com

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