Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya –
While I was visiting the Banksy Gallery one of the guides told me that I really needed to visit ‘Museu National d’Art de Catalunya.’ He explained that this was an amazing gallery and a ‘must see’. He was not wrong! The museum is set high above Barcelona and the views are breathtaking! Luckily I had my DSLR with me on this trip, so I decided to take lots of photos. My memory card was pretty full so I had to be a little careful about wasting frames but I managed to shoot everything I wanted.
The building is very imposing! In fact everything about it was imposing, including the security and guards. After a relaxed and friendly visit to both the Banksy (they actually made me a coffee), and the MOCA and MACBA museums, I was left in no doubt that one false move and I’d be in serious trouble. One guard shouted at me for just holding a bottle of water – maybe he had heard about the ‘Just Stop Oil’ protests in the UK and thought I was about to throw it over a painting or something? I duly complied and the water bottle quickly left the gallery. I also needed to take an urgent call, at which point another guard literally screamed at me to stop talking, even though I was whispering!
I can honestly say there was certainly an air of reverence about this museum that I had not ever encountered before. However, in their defence, the collections were both steeped in history, priceless, irreplaceable and clearly national treasures. Therefore their visitor apprehension was probably fully justified if not a little aggressive. For the guards, striking the right balance was always going to be difficult, but I didn’t let it spoil my visit. In fact the upside to all of the tight security meant that I could get right up close and personal to many famous artworks including works by Dali and Gaudi and many more.
Beautiful Interiors
Just like the MACBA, the MNAC also boasted beautiful interiors. However these interiors had an opulence about them not seen in the more modern architectural style of the MACBA. The light was equally as beautiful but it also had a sense of timelessness and reverence about it. Below are a selection of DSLR images interior that I shot.
I particularly like the image below because of the sense of movement conveyed by the central figure. The light levels in this part of the museum were quite low. As a result I decided to slow my shutter speed to maintain the correct exposure, all while steadying my camera with my hands. I was pleased with the result, because most of the image remained sharp but the faster moving people created the desired motion blur. Of course the process would have been easier had I had my tripod to hand.
A Gallery of Museum Interiors using a Smartphone
As well as shooting some of the interiors with my DSLR I also took advantage of taking some images with my smartphone. My cameras memory card was running low so I decided to do some shooting with my iPhone. Below are a few smartphone images of some of the interior spaces at the gallery.
Approximately 500 Artworks Photographed
On entering the museum I decided to shoot only those exhibits that particularly interested me. This did not work out well! I got a bit ‘carried away’ to say the least! I really enjoyed being in the museum and psychologically I think that I wanted to take the whole experience home with me. The result was a number of photo galleries (3 to be exact), that were packed with images of artworks. Although it was very time consuming, I felt that for me it was an absolutely worthwhile exercise because I have already enjoyed revisiting these images and it’s almost like reliving the museum experience all over again.
I spent approximately 4-5 hours in the museum and that is more or less how long it took me to get around all of the galleries. Below I have compiled a set of image galleries of all of the pieces that interested me. I tried wherever possible to keep the information plaques in the correct places. In most cases the flow goes from artwork to its information plaque or vice versa, either way the information plaques are near to the images they represent. Hopefully, if any of the info plaques have fallen out of sync, the information will be self explanatory and still make sense.
