Malaga Museums
If we should mention an important museum in Malaga this is the new Museo Picasso, although there are many other museums in the province which some of them are full of curiosities and others full of valuable pieces. However, although all of them are very important, any of them has signified for the city and then for the province what the Museo Picasso has: the renaissance of a peculiar and eclectic artistic character that Malaga needed.
The result was a shinning city that at the end has found that lost piece of the cubist panorama. Of course, this reputation for being a cultural city has been achieved thanks to the creation of previous museums of fantastic artistic interest inside the city such as the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo and also, the restoration of the Casa Natal de Picasso (Picasso's birth house) that signified the return of the genius to his native city.
History tells that this return was wish of the same Pablo Picasso who confessed it in a letter to a friend from Malaga called Juan Temboury.
This wish came true thanks to the donation of his heirs Christine and Bernard Picasso who offered the pictures. This is not a private but a personal collection that covers the walls of the museum showing the artist life through his different phases, all of the presented and distributed in a chronological way.
This collection completes the other art galleries of the artist that exists in the world: Paris, Barcelona and Antibes. The Museo Picasso Malaga was born with a special sensibility: it is the Museo de la Familia (Family Museum).
The last year, this Museo de la Familia celebrated his first anniversary since the first time its door were opened in a exceptional location: in the Palacio de los Condes de Buenavista, national monument since 1939. This historical building very typical of the civil architecture of the Andalusia of XVI century which posses renaissance and Mudejar pieces. During an archaeological research of the subsoil of this place, rests of Phoenicians, Roman and Greeks were found and now are integrated inside the building. The 27th October 2003 were shown for the first time in twelve rooms, 630 square metres and the 204 donated pictures by the family. Here we can find different styles, subjects and stands dated from 1894 to 1972, a year before the death of the most universal artist from Malaga. These collections area a visual biography of a genial painter, where you can see his life obsessions like, of course, women, sex, family and friends in pictures like "La Maternidad" or "La Sagrada Familia", to marvellous portraits of Olga Kokhlova, Dora Maar, Jacqueline and even his eldest child Paulo.
If the visitant wants to know the Picasso childhood, this is the first years of life of the most revolutionary painter in the XX century; you can visit the place where he was born, the Ruiz Picasso home in Malaga, a place that influenced him in the thematic of his pictures. The painter Casa Natal shows his way of life during the time he spent in the city. In the house we can see his first paintbrush, the suit we dressed in his baptism, his room and even his birth certificate together with an everlasting list of the names who visited him.
Above Picasso image, there are other things to visit in Malaga. There are innumerable centres that exhibit articles of any style, from artistic and valuable pieces with historical interest to the strangest elements. If visitants want to know the traditional and picturesque part of the province and know how our ancestors lived, then you should direct to the Museo de Artes y Costumbres Populares of the city located in the old Meson de la Victoria dated from 1632. On show here are a variety of items employed in the main economic activities traditionally carried out in Malaga, such as an oven used for baking bread, a grape press used in wine production, a steam-driven fire pump, a Berline used for carrying passengers and period furniture.
A similar exhibition can be found at Mijas' Ethnological History Museum, where farming tools and utensils, a XIX century oil mill and a wine cellar from the same period are on display.
However, let us now go back much further in history to the time to the earliest settlements in the area. So many different civilisations have cultivated, exploited, built on and lived in Malaga that a wealth of relics and artistic treasures have been left behind here. Nowhere is this better illustrated than at the popular Nerja Cave, a veritable wonder of nature that has its own Archaeology Museum in which remains from the upper Palaeolithic and Early Neolithic periods can be viewed. A later vestige is the statue known as the Ephebus of Antequera, which bears testimony of the presence of the Roman Empire and the most emblematic of works on show at the aforementioned town's Municipal Museum. Moving forwards in time, a carving of St. Francis of Assisi in polychrome wood by the Malaga sculptor Pedro de Mena can be found at the same museum. Other examples of this artist's work can be found in Malaga's Cathedral Museum alongside other sculptures and paintings produced between the XVI and XVIII centuries. Of equal interest are the collection of paintings, sculptures and furniture and pottery from the Renaissance, Baroque (works by Alonso Cano, Ribera and Pedro de Mena) periods. More recent creations can be seen at the Contemporary Spanish Print Museum in Marbella. Here, Picasso once again takes centre savage together with other eminent Spanish artists such as Tapies, Chillida and Miro. And, though it was already mentioned earlier, our journey though time should reach its conclusion in the city of Malaga itself at the Contemporary Art Centre, which is soon to be expanded.
A visit to a series of alternative venues will enable us to devolve deeper still into Malaga's history and find out more about the personalities that helped to shape it. For example, we can explore the perilous life of highwayman by calling in at the Popular history of the Highwayman Museum in Ronda. Here, the visitor will find books, oil paintings, stamps and personal effects that once belonged to some of the most famous bandits that in habited the Ronda Mountains in the XIX century. In order to learn about one of the leading highwaymen of the time, El Bizco ("Cross Eyes") de Borge, a visit to the Highwayman Museum in the village of Borge itself is highly recommended. Still on the subject of popular customs, fans of Spain's National festival, bullfighting, so adored by our beloved Picasso, will enjoy the Real Maestranza de Caballeria de Ronda, "Antonio Ordoñez" (in the city of Malaga) and Antequera bullfighting museums, where all manner of objects related to the art are on display.
Culture in Malaga goes far beyond museums and their exhibits alone. Curiosities also have their own place. One such venue ca be found in Mijas, at Max's Covered Wagon, a museum which houses the miniature exhibits that make up the original collection amassed by Professor Max, a hypnotist who decided to donate to the town the wealth of strange objects that he had collected during the numerous trips on which his unusual line of work had taken him. These items include the only shrunken white man's head known to exist, a portrait of Abraham Lincoln painted on a pin head, a collection of dissected fleas and a reproduction of Da Vinci's "Last Supper" on a grain of rice. Further miniatures are to be found at the Spanish Dolls' House Museum in Malaga itself, where some fifty unique, hand-made toy houses, most of which date back to the XIX century, can be found in display alongside dolls and toys trains from the same period. If these are not enough, they pay a visit to Marbella, where dwarf trees can be viewed at the Bonsai Museum, home to one of the finest arrays of these trees to be found anywhere in Europe and the best collection of wild olive trees in the world.
Returning to the normal-sized world, why not try your hand at playing a series of musical instruments from a variety of ages, countries and cultures? "Please touch" is the motto at the Interactive Music Museum in the city of Malaga, where visitors can play a collection of instruments ranging from femur-bone flutes to a VIII century Chinese lute.
MALAGA CITY MUSEUMS |
ALMACHAR |
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Museo de la Pasa |
ANTEQUERA |
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Museo Aula del Mar Manuel Agustin Heredia |
Museo Municiapal |
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ARDALES |
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Museo Flamenco Juan Breva |
Museo de Historia y Tradiciones |
Museo Casas de Muñecas |
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CASARES |
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EL BORGE |
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Museo del Bandolero |
Museo Catedralicio |
MARBELLA |
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Museo Provincial |
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Museo de Artes y Costumbres Populares |
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Museo Historico Etnologico |
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NERJA |
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Casa Natal - Fundacion Publica de Pablo Ruiz Picasso |
RONDA |
Museo Lara de Ciencia e Historia |
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Museo Historico Popular del Bandolero |
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Museo Joaquin Peinado |
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SAN PEDRO DE ALCANTARA Museo de Arte Mecanico |
Things to do in Malaga
