- The government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, visits the museum on the occasion of the Centenary Sorolla
- The Sorolla Museum, state museum of the Ministry of Culture, broke its historical record of visitors in 2023 with more than 345,000 visits, 40% more than in 2022
- The plan of activities for the centenary of the death of the painter will be extended during 2024 with publications and different samples
The government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín Aguirre, visited this Monday the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, where he met with its director, Enrique Varela Agüí, and later toured the facilities.
In the course of the visit, Francisco Martín was able to learn about the ongoing project for the expansion and rehabilitation of the museum, designed by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, which involves an investment of 6,475,362 euros, and whose works are scheduled to end next year 2025.
Since 2009, the Sorolla Museum has had the space for its expansion, adjacent to the current Museum, and also accessible from Zurbano Street, nº 68. It consists of a large local street of more than 1,500 square meters and an office plant on the first floor (which is already in use).
The objectives of the expansion and rehabilitation of the Sorolla Museum are:
- Providing the museum, in the spaces of expansion, with all those areas and services that currently do not have or have them in a deficient way (temporary exhibition hall, collection warehouse, restoration workshop, assembly hall, loading dock for cultural goods, etc. ).
- To comprehensively rehabilitate the Sorolla Museum, completely renovating the facilities, to provide air conditioning to all spaces that do not have it and restore its architectural elements. In addition, the new expansion area will allow the historic building of the Casa Sorolla to be freed of spaces for public use that are currently occupied for services for internal use.
- Provide accessibility to the museum, since the Sorolla Museum is not accessible to people with reduced mobility or motor disability. Therefore, it is considered a priority to provide the institution, both in the spaces of the expansion and in the Museum House, with the necessary elements to achieve accessibility conditions without architectural barriers and meet the repeated demands of accessibility formulated by visitors.
Centenary Sorolla: record of museum visitors
The Sorolla Museum is a state museum under the authority of the Ministry of Culture, located in the palacete of the promenade of General Martínez Campos, in Madrid, which served as a dwelling and painting workshop for Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida and his wife and three children.
Joaquín Sorolla is one of the great masters of Spanish painting of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was the Spanish painter of greatest international projection of his time and one of the capital figures of the history of Spanish art as a whole. In 2023 it was one hundred years since his death and, for this reason, numerous exhibitions and other activities have been held to pay tribute to the painter throughout the year. The national and international activities plan has been coordinated by the Sorolla Museum and the Sorolla Museum Foundation.
During the Year of Sorolla, the museum exceeded the historical number of visitors in 2023, with 345,000 people counted until December 31. The figure represents a 40% increase in visitors compared to the previous year. Between January and December the exhibition program has offered exhibitions that have explored less well-known aspects of the author, such as his artistic beginnings with ‘Sorolla. Origen’, until his last years, with ‘Sorolla is dead! Viva Sorolla!’; a new literary curator through ‘En el mar de Sorolla con Manuel Vicent’ or the recent study about his passionate discourse as a ‘plenairista’ painter with ‘Sorolla travel to paint. Another vision of Spain’, extended until next April 14.
A celebration for the territory
A total of 1.5 million people have visited the 38 exhibitions framed in the program '100 years of the death of Joaquín Sorolla'.
The exhibition ‘Sorolla travel to paint. Another vision of Spain’ centralizes the project that territorially covers the centenary. It is an initiative that takes the work of Sorolla to the places where they were executed in the natural. ‘Travel to paint. Sorolla in San Sebastián’, held at the Museo San Telmo; ‘Travel to paint, Sorolla in Toledo’, presented at the Museo del Greco; and ‘Travel to paint, Sorolla in A Coruña’, inaugurated at the Museo de Bellas Artes in A Coruña, were part of this project.
In turn, Valencia, the painter’s hometown, has hosted a large number of exhibitions framed in the centenary such as those held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Valencia. At the national level, the cities of Alicante, Oviedo, Avilés and Bilbao have joined the celebration of this event.
Internationally, various institutions have paid tribute to the painter with various exhibitions, such as The Hispanic Society of America in New York, the Meadows Museum in Dallas or the Museum of Fine Arts in Havana.
Centennial events also extend to this year
The celebration of the centenary will extend throughout 2024 as it has been declared an Event of Exceptional Public Interest until next December 31. Among other activities, it is planned to publish twenty publications by specialists with titles such as ‘Sorolla and the criticism of his time’, ‘La Valencia de Sorolla’, ‘El Madrid de Sorolla’ or the complete and critical edition of the letters of Joaquín Sorolla and Clotilde García del Castillo, among others.
In turn, the project ‘Sorolla. Travel to paint. Another vision of Spain’ will be exhibited in new venues: Valladolid, Mallorca and Seville. Likewise, the exhibition ‘Valencian painting in the time of Sorolla’ will be inaugurated at the Museu de Belles Arts de Castelló.
Finally, the Sorolla Museum will host in its headquarters in Madrid, the original exhibition ‘Sorolla in one hundred objects’ in May 2024. It will be the last exhibition to be held before the beginning of the works of rehabilitation of the museum, which are framed within the project of expansion and rehabilitation of the Ministry of Culture and which plans to open its doors in 2025 as a golden brooch of the Centenary Sorolla.
Finally, the Sorolla Museum and the Sorolla Museum Foundation have set themselves the goal of getting their name to trust the Church Metro station, which is two hundred meters from their home in Madrid and now houses their museum.