Museo Universidad de Navarra: 250,000 pieces brought together in an architectural marvel that bears the seal of Rafael Moneo
Museo Universidad de Navarra: 250,000 pieces brought together in an architectural marvel that bears the seal of Rafael Moneo
Museo Universidad de Navarra of Pamplona, designed by Rafael Moneo and located on the campus of the Universidad de Navarra, is a leading museum and an obligatory stop for lovers of culture: a place that helps people to establish a meaningful relationship with contemporary art and to develop a profoundly human, transcendent, imaginative, and free understanding of the world. The Museum supports and accompanies artists in carrying out projects of artistic creation and reflection, contributing not only with the resources of the museum itself but also with those of the greater university as a space for study and research.
Two legacies gave rise to Museo Universidad de Navarra: a donation from engineer and photographer José Ortiz Echagüe, and the collection of modern and abstract art belonging to María Josefa Huarte. Ortiz Echagüe’s donation gave rise to the creation of the University’s Photographic Fund – the seed of the current collection, made up of some 22,000 pieces including negatives, positives, intermediate photographic materials, and other objects. The conservation and development strategy of this first legacy led to the acquisition of pieces to form a corpus of images done in Spain from the origins of photography to the present day. In this collection, which is the most complete collection of photography done in Spain to date, there is room for all the techniques and all the themes that mark the evolution of this form of art. It was in 2008 when María Josefa Huarte decided to donate her private collection to the university (almost 50 pieces of contemporary art, including works by Eduardo Chillida, Jorge Oteiza, Pablo Picasso, Antoni Tàpies, Mark Rothko, and Vasili Kandinsky) that the collection’s artistic directors were able to expand their research – not only towards the development of photographic images but also towards the profound impact of photography on the evolution of contemporary art and on the construction of the image. This strategic work of developing the collection together with the creation projects (“Tender Puentes” or “Building Bridges”) has led the collection to house almost 250,000 pieces including photographs, negatives, intermediate photographic materials, paintings, sculptures, and drawings. From their origins, these pieces have been subject to cataloging and digitization – a task that continues to this day. Thanks to a new platform, the museum will make them available to the public via the internet. Additionally, the Museum presented a high-quality content subscription channel in October of 2022 that hosts conferences, shows, summaries, and “making of” documentaries for projects, as well as educational products only accessible to educators.
The museum has a theater where the performing arts enter into a dialog with other artists and disciplines, generating hybrid experiences that contribute to the institution’s mission, which is updated with each project – not only in the visual arts field but also in the performing disciplines through dance, music, and theater. All of this encompasses a way of working with art and its transforming power that serves as an inspiration for the undertaking of an ambitious educational, training, and cultural program. Currently, choreographer María Pagés, painter Fernando Pagola, multimedia artist Antoni Muntadas, and sculptor Carlos Irijalba –among others– are carrying out research and artistic creation projects within the context of the Artistic Residencies of Museo Universidad de Navarra. Each of them, from their own discipline and approach, offers their projects inspired by the MUN’scollection.
The institution thus continues consolidating its project around its collection –a fundamental pillar that opens enriching avenues of reflection–, and it does so through an Artistic Strategy Plan lasting until 2028 in which the lines of work are outlined with a focus on the processes of creation and research, the museum’s participation as a space for meeting and learning through art, as well as its contribution to the dissemination of contemporary art. Art improves life by boosting people’s critical capacity, their creativity, and their curiosity; in short, by transferring to society the values that permeate artistic practice.
Museo Universidad de Navarra
Campus Universitario, Pamplona.
