A secret behind Les Miserables: Victor Hugo's paintings

Les Miserables, original novel by Victor Hugo turned into musical, has been already 29 years succeeding on stage. Since the première at the London Barbican Theatre in 1985 it has been continuously represented around the world, while starting to be an important part of the history of musicals as a theatre type. The Spanish production of this play is now on tour around the Mediterranean country, garnering a great success.

How come could its creators, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, think that their work would be represented around the world in the most important theatre and would win various awards, including eight Tony. Furthermore the stage fame turned the play into a movie which won three Oscar under Tom Hopper's direction.

But one of the more relevant facts we want to talk you about is the scenic renovation on the sets assembly, which hits the original novel essence and spots a new difference. This material change took place four years ago, in occasion of the 25^th anniversary on stage. Cameron Mackintosh present us in this new production some fresh air to renew the interest and passion for this realist, passionate and human literary work. The atmosphere in general terms changes from a light and coloured area to a gloomy and grey environment, mimicking with the feeling of the characters and the real historical situation. The new use of these colours does not create monotony in the plot but on the contrary: it gives a poetical depth.

However, there is another key aspect to high-light the misery and poverty atmosphere: Victor Hugo's paintings projected at the back of the stage. Although he is mostly known as a poet, novelist and playwright, Les Miserables author worked also with fine art. As a result from his autodidact character the French poet and painter created a whole fine art production based on watercolour and charcoal techniques, which according to coetaneous sources helped to inspire him. As they were conceived as a sort of rehearsal and not for the public audience, Victor Hugo never showed them for fear of the critics as it could shadow his literary production, which was the one that really succeed.

Who could have told to the author of Les Miserables that his novel would had triumphed as a stage musical and that his paintings would be projected! We can only add to wish to to enjoy the play if you ever had the chance to see it.

Antoni Obiols

Best-sellers and Junk-books

These days are specially joyful: there is a lot of people on holidays, celebrating Easter, or not, with traditions like the Spanish processions or the “Mona”, a traditional cake eaten in Catalonia the day after Sunday of Easter. But this year it is very close with Saint George: two festivities almost the same week. And we, who have never before write a post about literature, have decided to write our very first.

Biografías, 2003. Alicia Martin intervention at Palacio Linares Casa De America, Madrid

We want to know how are our followers: do you read only in summer, next to the beach? Or do you read so many books a year that you need to write down a list with your new acquisitions? Do you buy them? Do you borrow them from libraries? Do you give them as a present with hidden meaning? Are books your loyal travel companions? Do you read on the tube, bus, train...? We would like also to have a though not only about how do we read but about what we read. Are we really what we read on the same way it is said we are what we eat? A couple of months ago El Cultural hosted a debate about the existence of high and low literature, various literature levels; and they went as far as to say some books are not literature: the best-sellers. What do you think? Are they literature? Just hobbies? Junk books? Does that really exists? Something with such a low quality we could called it junk? A best-seller is a book that in a shot time gets to a huge audience, usually with addictive stories which, perhaps, are close to banality and with a simplicity in its form. There are always exceptions and books of great literary value had become a selling success – like Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose – although the problem maybe is not in the book itself but in the speculative market around it, which is closely connected with the speculative market of art, governed for trends and the rules of supply and demand. The book's culture acts within a merchandising and publicity much savage, with a huge amount of money in the game and other interests. In this humor post it can be seen how, unfortunately, most people don't read or only read best-sellers, so we can always say that what matters, after all, is to at least read something.

Most read books according to http://todayilearned.co.uk

But is that true? The important thing is to read anything? Here I could use my colleague Ricard for a duet pro-against best-sellers, like that that article we did for the blog's anniversary! Clearly there are books with more or less quality, but in what is that based? On the writing or on the conceptualization? The purpose we search in reading is different depending on our mood or the moment of our life we are in. Sometimes we will look for books to feed our soul and reflect about the world and the human being; other times we will want a complex story, or perhaps just an occasional entertainment. After all everything might be ok. Everything? What do you think?

Guiomar Sánchez

@guiomar_sp

Wikipedia Phenomenon

It is undeniable that heritage and technology are closer day by day. Apps, games and a long etc. but when what is wished is to get opened to a wider audience (scholars, researchers, visitors, onlookers...) there is a perfect way: Wikipedia.

Since not so far a lot of museums have incorporate the position of the resident Wikepedian, which means a person dedicated to spill on Wikipedia all the information about the institution and its collections. Some of the Catalan museums that have opened their doors to the Wikipedian are the Museu de la Música, the Museu d’Història de Catalunya, the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya and the Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer in Vilanova i la Geltrú.

Inside view of the Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer. Source: Wikipedia

In this last museum is from the will of showing the collections, open it as if it was the museum database, with accurate information and high quality images. An excellent way of proving to the digital audience and the outlooker: look what a collection we have, we offer it to you, is yours!

When a museum propose to itself a challenge like that must know what is the purpose of it and how must the project be developed. In our case, when we met for the first time, it seemed like an unapproachable thing: all the museum's collection, with preference on the displayed works, upload the images being careful of the copyright, author profiles, artwork profiles... but fortunately we all took Nike's slogan: Impossible is nothing.

We divided the task and created various work methodologies on the go, and almost without realising at the beginning/mid-term of January we had already uploaded to Wikipedia all the artwork (painting and sculpture) displayed in the Museum: images at Wikimedia Commons, at the proper profiles, posts about the authors and posts about the artwork. Once achieved this purpose, we continued working actualizing the already existing posts: add bibliography, complement with quality images... As well as uploading some images from the storage.

Also, every Wikipedian has taken an individual challenge: to do a quality article, one totally trustful, with quality sources, a good redaction and a list of parameters, which must be presented for its aproval.

The Nesi mummy has been the quality article shared between the 3 Wikipedian. Besides each one has done an individual one.

A part from all this it must be said how spectacular it is to keep watching the results. As a bit of a taste:

Defense of the Artillery Park of Monteleón Defense of the Artillery Park of Monteleón Image positions (museum images have been used in about 480 different articles and in various languages) and in approximately three months there has been an average of 175.000 monthly views of images of the collection artwork! Besides the succes of Joaquín Sorolla's painting Defense of the Artillery Park of Monteleón. Only in Desember it had a total of 78.000 views.

And this is the project in which I have been working almost five month: working for the collection of the Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer of Vilanova i la Geltrú to be accessible from every corner of the world. And the best of it, as part of a team, as we are three resident Wikipedians in the museum: Marina Padilla, Elisenda Almirall and myself.

Among us and the other resident Wikipedians, as with other people related to the phenomenon, there is a collaborative link and a networking that is, perhaps, the future of working in culture.

Screenshot of the edition process at Wikipedia

Montse Medina

@montsemedina_

For more information:

Post in Catalan Wikipedia about the Wikiproject of the Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer.

 Collections Online: motto and aim. Let's do it with 3 Wikipedians in Residence at a time. Article about the singularity of being three Wikipedian workers

#MuseumWeek, museum-what?

There has been a week on Twitter where culture has become Trending Topic each day. Seven days and seven hashtags have taken – or have wanted to take – the European museums to all the community on this social network.

Lately it has been the week of museum on Twitter which, under the hashtag #MuseumWeek, represented a whole week to promote and publicize the work carried out by the institutions that have participated.

That is not new; Twitter had already host previous activities and cultural days like the #AskACurator ongoing since 2010, o the #MuseumSelfie days on this past 21 and 22 January. But the difference this time has been the will to implicate as much museums as possible, moving it from one or two days to a complete week engaged to the museums. The pioneers where museums from Great Britain, and at the end there were included French, Italian and Spanish museums. In Catalonia, from where we write this blog, we could find big institutions like the national museum MNAC (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya), the Museu Picasso or the Fundació Miró, up to more local museums like the Museu d'Art de Morera (Morera's Art Museum) or the Museu d'Art Modern de Tarragona (Museum of Modern Art of Tarragona). All of them have desired to give some space to the questions and opinions of the Twitter users, as well as publicize the museums but also giving voice to the intern works that we usually won't see when we visit them, like the restoration team and the educational or maintenance services.

The methodology of this initiative was to propose activities and show something of the museum throughout various hashtags: on Monday #DayInTheLife to show the daily routine of a museum worker, from directors or curators to maintenance or security team; moreover, must be thought most museums close their doors on Monday and that is a good way to show what they do and how they work even if the galleries remain closed, emphasizing the internal tasks like management, curatorship, maintenance, restoration, etc; on Tuesday we had #MuseumMastermind where Twitter users were encouraged to answer questions about the collection, history, building, etc., even with some prizes! Wednesday was time for #MuseumMemories, where everyone could explain anecdotes and memories about museums, thus creating a relaxed and friendly environment with a good mood and the most original stories. The fourth day was #BehindTheArt, where the museum has taken prominence, talking about his artwork, museology, architecture, etc., making clear the changes and remodelations that have evolved the institution over time, including iconic or curious facts that have happened inside those.

Friday was the #AskTheCurator day, a hashtag that has already been long time in the network, whose objective was for the users to ask questions to the museum workers about internal or external issues around the exhibitions, the favourite exhibitions for directors or curators, how difficult is to restore certain materials or which educational policy are they following are some of the tweets we were able to see.

It has been left for the weekend, successfully, two topics where the principal action is on the Twitter users and no on the institution: I am talking about #MuseumSelfie, consisting on upload selfies taken inside the museums; and #GetCreative where the user of this social network was encouraged to use their wit and produce creative pictures or reinterpreting an artwork, among other options. However it must be said that the museums' CM have been active during the whole weekend doing a commendable job with some probably underpaid overtime, so it has been a very intense week for both freelance and institution affiliated Tweeter users.

Therefore we can say this week has been a great success for the participating museums: for the big institutions it has served to enforce audience loyalty and for the smaller ones to release themselves and acquire some followers, which means more diffusion. Though there is still a lot to do, as it has been fun and entertaining but we must think that, maybe, this diffusion we guess they have had it has only been a mirage: we must take account that an important part of this social network users, specially the ones not linked, directly or not, with the museums and culture, hasn't find out about this initiative. This, anyway, is a task for the next #MuseumWeek, because what does have been clear is the desire and will of the museums, professionals and cultural sector in general, to create links, to get out of the museum rooms and to show the inside of every institutions, as it has been proved this last days with games, riddles and upstanding their most fun and playful side; pretending to develop a quality, open and participative job. 

Guiomar Sánchez

#guiomar_sp