Malaga Museum

The Málaga Museum is an exhibition center in the Spanish city of Málaga that houses the collections of two museums from Málaga, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Málaga and the Málaga Provincial Archaeological Museum, with more than 15,000 references in archeology and an extensive pictorial collection of 2,000 works produced between the 19th and 20th centuries. It is the fifth largest museum in Spain and the largest in Andalusia.

The headquarters building built in the XVIII century, the Customs Palace, integrates for the first time in history these outstanding collections, which remained stored without an exhibition center for almost 20 years, from 1997 until the opening of this center, on December 12, 2016.

It was included in the list of the most valued cultural entities in Spain in 2016.

History

Heart anatomy (1890) by Enrique Simonet.

Museum of Fine Arts of Malaga

The creation of the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts in Malaga was an old initiative of the academics of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Telmo promoted since 1866. On July 24, 1913, the institution was established by Royal Decree, that after many attempts and after the Museum Board of Trustees was constituted on February 3, 1915, it was inaugurated on August 17, 1916 in some rooms of a house on Calle del Císter in Málaga at the corner of Calle Pedro de Toledo, rented to the Marquis de Larios, president of the board of trustees at that time. In 1920, the aforementioned building was sold to the Teresian Association, and faced with the risk of being left without premises for the installation, the Board of Trustees of the Museum decided that it should be installed in the Academy building itself and in its halls.

After years of searching for a definitive location, its new headquarters would be inaugurated on April 28, 1961 by the then Head of State, Francisco Franco Bahamonde, in the Palace of the Counts of Buenavista, with what was seen The long-standing aspiration of the San Telmo Academy of Fine Arts that Málaga would have a dignified Fine Arts Museum in a suitable environment has definitely been fulfilled.

This headquarters was closed to the public in 1997, since the palace of the Counts of Buenavista had been chosen by the heads of Culture of the Junta de Andalucía as the headquarters of the Picasso Museum in Malaga.

Provincial Archaeological Museum of Malaga

The Tomb of the Warrior was discovered in 2012 and became one of the main pieces of the museum.

The Provincial Archaeological Museum of Málaga was created by decree of 1947 and inaugurated in 1949, having as its headquarters the palace-fortress of the Alcazaba of Málaga. The new museum integrated into its founding collection the funds of the old Loringian museum, archaeological collection formed in the XIX century by the Marquises of Casa-Loring, as well as the archaeological collections of the then Provincial Museum of Fine Arts Arts and those from the different excavations carried out since the 30s of the XX century in the Alcazaba of Malaga itself and other archaeological sites from the province. Consequently, the museum exhibited objects from various classic provincial archeology sites, in a range of chronology that went from Prehistory to the Islamic period: caves with prehistoric occupation and rock art, such as La Pileta and La Victoria; necropolis from the megalithic period, such as that of Alcaide; some of the first known Phoenician objects in the province, before the magnitude of the phenomenon of Phoenician colonization on the Malaga coast was even suspected; a valuable Roman collection of busts, sculptures and funerary pieces, originating in Cártama and the subsoil of the Customs Palace, among other places; and notable elements from medieval sites, such as the Alcazaba de Málaga or Bobastro.

In 1996, the rehabilitation works of the Alcazaba forced the transfer of the Provincial Archaeological Museum, provisionally locating the funds in the Convent of Trinidad. The collections remained in this building until 1999. Since that year the collection was stored without the possibility of being contemplated, in the same building as the provisional headquarters of the Provincial Library of Málaga on Av. Europa.

Malaga Museum

In 1973, the Museum of Malaga was established, unifying the Museum of Fine Arts and the Provincial Archaeological Museum in a single heritage institution. However, the two collections continued to have separate locations, in two emblematic buildings of the city, the Palace of the Counts of Buenavista and the Alcazaba of Malaga.

In 1984, the transfer of powers in matters of culture from the Spanish State to the Junta de Andalucía led to the management of the Museum of Malaga being transferred to the Ministry of Culture of the Junta de Andalucía. And since 1997 in the case of the Fine Arts collection, and 1999 with respect to the Archaeological Museum, none of them had venues where they could be seen, with the exception of small samples in temporary exhibitions.

After two decades with the collections stored and several delays that mobilized the citizens of Malaga asking for the opening of their museum, on December 12, 2016 the doors of the new Museum of Malaga were opened, which integrated the collections for the first time of the Provincial Archaeological Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts of Málaga, being inaugurated by authorities such as Francisco de la Torre (Mayor of Málaga), Susana Díaz (President of the Junta de Andalucía), Rosa Aguilar (Minister of Culture) and Íñigo Méndez (Minister of Culture).

Customs Palace

The Customs Palace is a building designed in 1788 and completed in 1826, originally intended to serve the passenger traffic of the Port of Malaga. Located next to the Malaga park, it is the permanent headquarters of the Malaga Museum.

Description of the building and collections

Ground floor

Museum yard.

At the entrance we will see The Customs Lady, a Roman statue from the II century found during the construction of the palace, as well as the restored patio of the Palacio de la Aduana, which is freely accessible and includes orange trees, palm trees, a fountain and information panels on the history of the building, for example the visit of Queen Elizabeth II in 1862 to this place. On this floor there is also the shop, the temporary exhibition hall, the lobby, the luggage room, a cafeteria, opened in May 2018, and the visitable warehouse, an innovative space in which visitors can see the works that are being restored or others that cannot be exposed for long periods.

Enrique Simonet, The Judgment of Paris. 1904

First floor: Fine Arts

As a whole, the Museum of Malaga has 2000 works in its Fine Arts section, which includes canvases and sculptures by old masters such as Luis de Morales, Luca Giordano, Murillo, Antonio del Castillo, Alonso Cano, Ribera, Vicente Carducho, Goya, Pedro de Mena or Zurbarán.

The institution guards what is considered one of the largest collections of paintings from the XIX century in Spain, with painters being represented such as Sorolla, Carlos de Haes, Federico Madrazo, Esquivel, Vicente López Portaña or Ramón Casas, as well as several of the most famous members of the so-called Malagueña School of Painting: Moreno Carbonero, José Denis Belgrano, Pedro Sáenz Sáenz, Enrique Simonet, Muñoz Degrain, José Nogales or Bernardo Ferrándiz, while on the international scene it has works by León Bonnat or the German avant-garde Franz Marc.

It also has an interesting collection of modern Spanish art up to the 1950s with works by Picasso, José Moreno Villa, Rafael Canogar, Juan Barjola, Óscar Domínguez or Josep Guinovart, among others; and a small space dedicated to the transformation of the two museums to the current unified one, with explanatory videos of said process, such as the demonstration carried out by the Malaga society in 1997 as a claim for the opening of the museum.

Mosaic of Venus of the second century

Second floor: Archaeological

The only catalog published until 2014 on the collections of the Provincial Archaeological Museum was published in 1933. In it you can read.-

"When it is for us a venturous reality the illusion has so long been caressed, to install our splendid collections of local art of suitable capacity and distribution, then they can be duly appreciated by our convecinos and visitors the archaeological jewels that the Provincial Museum possesses, where the quality exceeds the number...".

The archaeological collection has funds of more than 15,000 pieces, covering a historical period from the VIII century a. C. to the Middle Ages: Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Arab, Christian and Byzantine. In recent decades, pieces from the excavations carried out by the University of Malaga have been incorporated, as well as various batches of preventive and emergency archaeological interventions that have been carried out in the urban area of Malaga, such as those found in the excavation of the Teatro Roman, the Tomb of the Warrior or the Venus Mosaic of the II century that was found in Cártama. Part of the Loringian Museum's collection has been restored and moved from the Botanical Garden.

Third and fourth floors

The third floor includes a library open to researchers, which opened in October 2017, and the headquarters of the San Telmo Royal Academy of Fine Arts, moved in February 2020; and on the fourth floor a restaurant, which opened in May 2018; and the museum viewpoint, from which you have a unique view of Malaga, especially the Alcazaba, the Gibralfaro Castle or the Roman Theatre.

Notable works

• Tomb of the Warrior
• Allegory of the History, Industry and Commerce of Malaga
• And he had a heart! Heart anatomy
• The Judgment of Paris
• Mosaic of Venus
• The ultimate goal
• Release of the captives of Malaga by the Catholic Kings

Temporary exhibitions

The first temporary exhibition, called Almogávares, was dedicated to the sculptor from Malaga Miguel Ortiz Berrocal, although it was not installed in the temporary exhibition hall, but on the ground floor of the museum from December 2019 until May 2020, consisting of ten busts made of cast bronze. The temporary exhibition hall, which has a space of 560 square meters, bears the name of the Malaga painter Eugenio Chicano, and although it was scheduled to be inaugurated in 2020, its opening took place on May 31, 2021.

Shooting

The museum facilities were used to recreate Vatican City in the series Warrior Nun, released on Netflix in 2020.