Go back there!

- Tomorrow I'm going to the Tate Modern.

- I went there three years ago. You're gonna love it!

- Yes, I want also last year. It's great.

- Oh! Then why are you going back?

- ...

Maybe is because I really love museums but I have had this little conversation more than once. There is a lot of people who thinks of museums as collectibles from a catalog: I have visit it, I can cross it now from my list of museums to see, let's go for the next one. If a museum doesn't show temporary exhibitions it almost seems like we should forget about it, as if the permanent exhibition has no more to offer. But is not like that.

The London National Gallery is always adding little artworks
which qualifies its artistic discourse. Go back there!

Usually the “permanent” exhibition of a museum shows only a little part of the collection that they keep in the warehouse, and so the good museums try to have a little rotation with the exhibited artworks. That not only helps to a better conservation of the collection but it also creates an appealing reason for the visitors to come back after a while. Sometimes it is just an artwork replacing another one; but it also can be, and here is where in my point of view the thing gets interesting, a complete new distribution of the artworks. That second kind of change allow us the see again artworks we have already seen, but this time under new perspectives. For example, it could be that the first time we see a certain Caravaggio's still-life the museum shows it in the same room than the other works of the Italian painter, but after some years we go back and we find the same piece surrounded with still-life from other artists. Thereby the first time we see that artwork we perceive it as a part of Caravaggio's work, while on our next visit to that museum we can better appreciate the technical and style differences between all the still-life's.

Bilbao's Guggenheim offer is based on temporary exhibitions.
Go back there! whenever you can.

Besides from that main reason nowadays most museums have also a library open to the public and organize different activities and conferences, some of them even host contests, all of that to remember us that they are there waiting for our next visit. Sure you can also find your favourite museums online, not only with its own web page but also with Facebook and Twitter profiles to keep you informed with their news. Museum shops offer the chance to buy souvenirs with their main artworks on it, exhibition catalogues, books and drawing material; while some big museums have also a coffee shop or restaurant, a good place to host a nice and cultural dinner.

Therefore we encourage you to go back to the museums you have already visit, to repeat if you loved them or to give a second chance if their wasn't what you expected (maybe this time you will feel better in there). 21^st Century museums are, or at least they should be, alive institutions, full of life and movement, institutions that change, offer activities and want to interact with the audience. In my own experience there are museums where I have discover a new thing with every new visit. Take the chance this weekend with the International Museum Day and discover, or even better re-discover, the museums in your city.

Ricard Gispert

@ricardgispert

The riddle of modernity

The concern for being modern, for being trendy, it's not only a human life condition; it also happens in literature, for example all the novels with the same subject that came out after the success of a best-seller or even the fan-fics are a prove of that. But that concern can also be found in art subjects. That's how the different art movements arise: someone inspired tries to be original and changes the rounded arches for the highest lancet arches giving way from the Romanesque to the Gothic architecture; Edouard Monet started to paint outside instead of being closed in his study, his fellow contemporaries liked it and copy it. Originality becomes trendy and that is only break again when someone else original appears. That explains why we remember the virtuous who generate changes but most of artist who copy the new style just remain anonymous forever. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

African masks/ a portrait by Pablo Picasso

But also at the same time in art, like in trends, everything is cyclical. The bell-bottom trousers are back, or the thick plastic frame glasses... The old stuff that once was left aside is now original again. Otherwise what is vintage fashion? Well then in art it happens exactly the same: the Renaissance raises the balance and harmony typical of the Greece-Roman classic art, afterwards it comes the Baroque filling up everything with ornaments and recharged compositions that will only stop with the Neoclassicism, a new return to Greece-Roman art. Thus century after century, cycle after cycle, we arrive to contemporary art, which seems to ignore the cycle: everything is innovation and every new change looks like a complete break with all previous art. Precisely “break with everything” was the idea that contemporary artist had in mind; but intentionally or not it all still feels like a return to earlier periods. Art feeds itself. Pablo Picasso's cubism is inspired in the African traditional masks while Andy Warhol's works, despite the innovation of the technique, are just new interpretations of the portrait and the still-life, two of the main topics in Baroque paintings.

The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living, Damien Hirst (1991)

And that's how we get to Damien Hirst, a very controversial British artist in recent decades for his work with dead animals preserved in formaldehyde. Death, the main topic in Hirst's artworks, has always been deeply laden with symbolism and a strong personal meaning. A lot of artworks talk about death, but if we use death as a tool and not only as a theme: outrage! A lot of people would say “that is not art”. Aberrations of contemporary art! But, oddly, Damien Hirst hasn't been the first one in using corpses to express himself artistically. To prove it we invite you to go to Rome and visit Santa Maria della Concezione dei Capuccini's crypt. The brave who dare to go in will discover a peculiar 17^th Century decoration which the Cappuccin monks made with the bones of its ancestors: skeletons turned into statues, altars made entirely with skulls, barrel vaults decorated with tibias and pelvis... It has nothing to envy to Hirst's shark in formaldehyde.

That is the riddle of modernity: what it's now modern is what it used to be old. Two opposite poles which are touched by the tips. So now we invite you to play a little game with the comments. Help us find more examples of modern art that can be linked with ancient art.

Ricard Gispert

@ricardgispert