Secret Guide to the Rambla at Palau Virreina

The project entitled Secret Guide to the Rambla (Guia Secreta de la Rambla) invites people to examine its photographic, artistic and other visual representations of the area. The Rambla is most certainly one of Barcelona’s most iconic and universal spaces, for that reason we recommend to discover one of the Rambla’s jewel, the Hotel 1898 in Las Ramblas!

The exhibition, entitled Instantànies de carrer (Street Snapshots), displays a century’s worth of history in the form of 267 photographs of various kinds, from street photos taken at the start of the 20th century to critical photocreations with the current “postcardisation” of the Rambla. The Ocaña 1973-1983 exhibition focuses on the role of this artist, Ocaña, a pioneer of the gay movement and an entire period, within the underground and alternative cultural movements during the 1970s and until he died 1983.

To this end, “Secret Guide to La Rambla” places photographs by Frederic Ballell, Gabriel Casas, Josep Maria Sagarra, Brassaï, Dora Maar, Ramon Masats, Colita, Xavier Miserachs, Josep Cunties and Manel Armengol alongside images by Eva Serats, Red Caballo, Àngels Margarit, OriolVilanova, Peter Downsbrough, Jaume Pitarch, Beat Streuli and Frank Berger, amongst many others.
 
Secret Guide to La Rambla – > From 25 March to 24 May 2010 – Free admission
Palau de la Virreina – La Virreina Lab 
Address: la Rambla, 99 – Ciutat Vella | tuesday-sunday: 12-20 h – mondays closed, except holidays

Secret Guide to the Rambla

New visions at the Virreina Image Centre

As the turkish writer Orhan Pamuk said at the CCCB, museums need to evolve, to free themselves of institutional rules and open themselves up more.

New visions at the Virreina Image Centre

This is the premise for the Virreina Centre de la Imatge’s new stage. Under Carles Guerra’s direction, it opting for a rethinking of its layout and contents, to make culture available to the public according to their needs and to create a dialogue instead of one-way messages.

With these new working guidelines oriented towards cultural-policy debates, the Virreina Centre de la Imatge has two exhibitions in line for 2010 that will examine the weight of urban and media images.

The new Image Centre will not be conceived solely as an art centre; it will attempt to turn itself into a place where images and culture reveal the conditions under which they are produced and circulated.

With this in mind, the exhibition rooms will be concentrated on the second floor of the Palau de la Virreina, with a new layout that removes the architectural barriers and will turn the Xavier Miserachs gallery into a new hub of cultural services in the style of a “laboratory” at street level, allowing the public free admission to the auditorium and archives.

The Image Centre will start these activities on 9 March with Guia secreta de la Rambla (Secret Guide to the Rambla), a look at this controversial urban space now saturated with audiovisual and literary images. Accompanying this will be the book Barcelona en blanc i negre (Barcelona in Black and White), which shows the Rambla as an organic entity fully integrated into the city, and a room devoted to Ocaña for the artist’s central role on this avenue.

Virreina Image Centre website  |  NN Hotels: www.nnhotels.com