The historic Martorell Museum, which for decades housed the Geology Museum, reopened its doors this Tuesday after a thorough renovation. The building, inaugurated in 1882, is the oldest public museum in Barcelona and is part of the museum facilities that make up the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona. From now on, after its comprehensive rehabilitation, it will host scientific exhibitions on topics with a strong social impact related to both the climate and biodiversity crisis, as well as the exploration of the current frontiers of knowledge.
The premiere of the renamed Center Martorell d’Expositions comes a day after the renovated Hivernacle, which is right next door, was presented to the public. Both are part of the ambitious project of the Ciutadella del Coneixement, which plans to set up a first-class European scientific hub in the park and its surroundings with the help of administrations and universities.
The Martorell Exhibition Center building was designed by the architect Antoni Rovira i Trias and was built to house the first public museum in Barcelona based on the legacy that the archaeologist and naturalist Francesc Martorell i Peña left to the city. From 1924 it became a museum of geology. Today it is integrated into the Natural Sciences Museum of Barcelona, ??which has its main offices in the blue building of the Forum. In the Ciutadella, it also has the Castle of the Three Dragons, pending a rehabilitation that is expected to be activated soon. It also has the Botanical Garden and the Historical Botanical Garden, in Montjuïc.
The reform of the Martorell Exhibition Center will begin at the end of 2021 and has required an investment of five million euros, 60% contributed by the City Council and 40% by the Generalitat, the two administrations that make up the consortium of the Museum of Natural Science.
In the stage that is now starting, the Martorell Exhibition Center hosts two exhibitions that have free entry during the Christmas holidays, until January 7. After and until the end of 2024, they will be paid. It is about “Nature or Culture? A vision from the museum of natural sciences”, self-produced, and “WOW. Museum animals: Science, technique and art”, promoted and coordinated with the collaboration of the Parque de las Ciencias de Granada.
The first exhibition is a local and global historical tour of natural history museums, from cabinets of 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 from the Museu de Ciències Naturals such as the skeleton of Avi, an elephant that was a celebrity at the Zoo long before Snowflake. He was the first one of Asian origin he had. He died in 1914. The exhibition aims not only 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 or the generalization of artificial intelligence.
In “WOW. Museu animals: Science, technology and art”, the taxidermist Antonio Pérez Rodríguez, who has developed a new technique called “taxidermy in motion”, shows a faithful representation of nature where art, technique and science come together in extraordinary compositions. The exhibition presents six naturalized scenes of Mediterranean and African animals, such as a group of fifteen wild goats stampeding, two zebras fighting or a lioness hunting wildebeest. They are panoramic visions loaded with so much drama that it seems as if a fragment of real life had been frozen.