Martorell Exhibition Center is the name of the renovated Martorell Museum, the former Geology Museum, which reopened its doors yesterday after a thorough renovation. The premiere comes a day after the recently rehabilitated Hivernacle, which is right next door, was presented to society. Both are part of the ambitious project of the Ciutadella del Coneixement, which envisages setting up a first-class European scientific center in the park and its surroundings thanks to the administrations and universities.
The Martorell Exhibition Center building was designed by the architect Antoni Rovira i Trias and was built in 1882 to house the first public museum in Barcelona based on the legacy left by the archaeologist and naturalist Francesc Martorell i Peña in the city. From 1924 it became a museum of geology. Today it is part of the museum facilities that make up the Natural Sciences Museum of Barcelona, ??which has its main offices in the blue building of the Forum. The Ciutadella also has the castle of the Three Dragons, pending a rehabilitation that is expected to be activated very soon. In addition, it has the Botanical Garden and the Historical Botanical Garden in Montjuïc.
The reform of the Martorell Exhibition Center began at the end of 2021 and required an investment of five million euros. 60%, contributed by the Barcelona City Council, and 40%, by the Generalitat, the two administrations that form the consortium of the Museum of Natural Sciences. It will host scientific exhibitions on topics with a great social impact related to the climate crisis, biodiversity and the exploration of the current frontiers of knowledge.
This new stage begins with two exhibitions with free entry for the Christmas holidays, until January 7. After that, and until the end of 2024, they will be paid. Are they Nature or culture? A view from the museum of natural sciences, of own production, and WOW. Museum animals: science, technique and art, promoted and coordinated with the collaboration of the Granada Science Park.
The first exhibition is a local and global historical tour of natural history museums, from curiosities to modern natural science museums. It proposes a reflection on how the relationship between human beings and nature has evolved. It has emblematic collections of the Museum of Natural Sciences, such as the skeleton of Avi, an elephant who was a celebrity at the zoo long before Snowflake. He was the first of Asian origin that he welcomed. He died in 1914. The exhibition does not only want to show collections, but also to review the past of these institutions and raise questions about what role museums should play in a society facing a global climate crisis and the generalization of artificial intelligence
To WOW. Museum animals: science, technique and art, the taxidermist Antonio Pérez Rodríguez, who has developed a new technique called “taxidermy in motion”, shows a faithful representation of nature, in which art, technique and science are ‘unite in some extraordinary compositions.
The exhibition presents six naturalized scenes of Mediterranean and African animals, such as a group of fifteen stampeding wild goats, two fighting zebras and a lioness hunting for nuts. They are panoramic visions loaded with so much drama that it is as if a fragment of real life had been frozen.
