LONDON.- The British Museum and “la Caixa” Banking Foundation are renewing their hugely successful collaboration to present 5 major new British Museum exhibitions in Caixaforum centres in Spain. Today, Isidro Fainé, Chairman of “la Caixa” Banking Foundation, and Sir Richard Lambert, Chairman of the Trustees of the British Museum, signed a new agreement between the two institutions. The agreement, which covers the period from 2020 to 2024, announces a second stage to jointly organise exhibitions in Spain that was first launched at the British Museum in 2015.
”la Caixa” Banking Foundation’s CaixaForum cultural centres in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Saragossa, Palma and (from 2021) Valencia will host five new jointly-organised shows with objects from the British Museum’s collection.
The first exhibition from this new agreement will be The Human Image: Masterpieces of Figurative Art, which will be on tour around Spain from 2020 to 2022. The show will explore representations of the body throughout history and different cultures. Next, The American Dream: Pop to the Present will cast its gaze on the past six decades of US history through print making, with works by celebrated American artists such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Kara Walker and Julie Mehretu. The third exhibition Islanders: The Art of Life in Oceania will showcase the artistry of Pacific islanders, enabling visitors to discover the close relationship between art and life in Oceania.
The last two exhibitions covered by the new agreement will focus on the role of the goddess in different religions and the results of a major research project into the lives of Egyptian mummies. Goddess (title TBC) celebrates the role of the goddess in world history, from ancient polytheistic religions to modern Hinduism. Egyptian Mummies: Exploring Ancient Lives continues the British Museum’s ground-breaking research by using the latest non-invasive scientific methods to study the Egyptian mummies in its collection.
These five ambitious projects will generate a total of 20 showings of these exhibitions for the enjoyment of visitors to ”la Caixa” Foundation’s cultural centres in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Saragossa and Palma. The new CaixaForum Valencia, a centre currently under construction, will also host some of these exhibitions.
This new partnership of touring exhibitions builds on previous collaborations between the two institutions that has seen 480.000 visitors visit a joint British Museum and La Caixa exhibition in Spain since 2016. The Pillars of Europe: The Middle Ages at the British Museum opened at the CaixaForum centres in Madrid, Barcelona and Saragossa in 2016 and 2017. The competition in Ancient Greece was presented for the first time in Madrid last year. After travelling to Barcelona and Seville, the show will stop off at Saragossa and Palma. The third project, Pharaoh: King of Egypt, made its critically-acclaimed debut recently at CaixaForum Barcelona and will subsequently travel to Madrid, Girona, Seville and Tarragona. The final exhibition from the previous partnership, Age of Luxury: from the Assyrians to Alexander,will focus on the idea of luxury in antiquity and can be seen at ”la Caixa” Banking Foundation’s cultural centres in Barcelona, Madrid and Saragossa between 2019 and 2020.
Sir Richard Lambert, Chairman of the British Museum Board of Trustees said, “I am delighted that the British Museum and “la Caixa” Banking Foundation will be continuing our successful collaboration for another 5 years. So far, our joint touring exhibitions have bought the stories of four great civilisations, told through unique objects from the British Museum’s collection, to 480.000 people at CaixaForum venues across Spain. The British Museum lends objects across the world and partnerships like this are vital to make the British Museum’s collection as accessible as possible to a global audience.”
