MADRID: Madrid has aspirations to become a world cultural capital with the ongoing enlargement and modernization of its three main art museums, which it hopes will draw seven million visitors annually.
The Spanish capital is known as the home of the Prado, but also houses two other major art museums, the Reina Sofia museum of modern art and the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum displaying the collection of a German-Hungarian aristocratic family.
The government is investing more than 140 million euros (170 million dollars) to add over 50,000 square metres to the three museums, creating an "Art Walk" reminiscent of similar spaces in Berlin or Washington in the heart of Madrid.
Located less than ten minutes from each other, the three museums will take the visitor "from the Renaissance and El Greco to Picasso and pop art", officials said.
Highlights range from masterpieces by Velazquez and Goya at the Prado to "Guernica", Picasso's 1937 huge anti-war canvas at the Reina Sofia, which many regard as the most important painting of the 20th century.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza museum, which has works from the Middle Ages to the likes of Lucian Freud, will fill gaps in the collections of the two bigger museums, officials explained.
Inaugurated in 1992 after the late Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza's Spanish wife Carmen Cervera persuaded him to sell his family collection to the Spanish state for a nominal price, the enlargement of "the Thyssen" is the first among the three museums to have been completed.
Inaugurated in June, the museum renovated under the guidance of a Barcelona team of young architects now exhibits more than 200 additional paintings pertaining to the private collection of Carmen Cervera, a former Miss Spain who became an art expert.
On loan to Spain free of charge until 2013, Cervera's collection affords the visitor "a subtle and marvellous walk through the light and colours of nature" as seen by European masters ranging from Corot to Canaletto over more than four centuries, the daily La Vanguardia said.
At the nearby Prado, the floor space is being enlarged by 18,000 square metres to around 50,000 square metres, which will allow the museum to exhibit many of the works it has kept in store rooms for lack of space.
Designed by Spanish architect Rafael Moneo, the new Prado will link the previous 19th century building with a partly underground cement and glass contemporary complex containing the 17th century Jeronimos monastery, whose reconstruction under a glass roof has prompted protests from local residents.
The Prado group of buildings will also comprise the Cason del Buen Retiro, which will house 19th century art, and the former Army Museum. Moneo's design for the venerable 185-year-old Prado has been the most controversial among the three museums, with critics lambasting it as insufficient or expensive.
The 18-year-old Reina Sofia museum, known for its Salvador Dalis and Joan Miros as well as its striking glass lifts on the exterior, is being enlarged under the supervision of French architect Jean Nouvel.
Nouvel is turning the museum housed in an 18th century hospital into "a singular pyramid of steel and glass" with a stain of red light showing on its transparent facade, the daily El Pais said.
The museums will also feature new non-exhibition spaces such as auditoriums, libraries, restaurants, cafes, shops and offices. In addition to reinforcing the interaction between the three museums, the Art Walk is intended to rescue Madrid's cultural heart from heavy traffic through the semi-pedestrianization of the Paseo del Prado street.
The museums are being renovated in an attempt to cope with increasing numbers of visitors, which are expected to climb from four million last year to seven million after the enlargement. The Art Walk is scheduled to be finished by 2005, a year which will show whether Madrid can live up to its ambitions. -dpa
