News
Prado Museum Investigates 25 Artworks Seized During Spanish Civil War
The investigation represents the first step of a process to return the works to families and descendants of those who originally owned them.
Spain
Art
Blind Spots Abound in Guggenheim Bilbao’s Car-Themed Exhibition
Motion lionizes the personal automobile as an objet d’art of unparalleled cultural influence while minimizing its negative effects. Oh, and it’s sponsored by Volkswagen and Cadillac.
News
“Unusually Large” Roman-Era Stone Phallus Impresses Archaeologists
The discovery confirms that it’s not the length of the history that matters, so much as its breadth.
Art
Home Is a Mindset for a Nomadic Artist
Carlos Bunga's architectural installation in the Reina Sofía's Crystal Palace creates the facade of stability and strength yet is actually ephemeral and even fragile.
News
Spanish Officials Seize Private Taxidermy Collection Worth $31M
Civil Guard agents raided a warehouse near Valencia that housed hundreds of specimens of endangered animals, including at least one extinct species.
Art
Exploring the Politics of Masks Beyond COVID
Though masks are popularly conceived of as limiting expression, they allow their wearers to access a range of emotionality, of which the human face alone is incapable.
News
At the Prado, Visitors Can Inhale the Smells of a Brueghel Painting
The Madrid museum collaborated with a fragrance company to create ten scents of items seen in the masterpiece "The Sense of Smell."
Film
Pedro Almodóvar Presents a Beguiling Thriller About Motherhood
Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit play two new mothers from very different backgrounds in the Spanish director’s latest study in female interiority.
News
Guggenheim Bilbao's Cleaning Staff Stages Protest-Performance Over Dismal Wages
This weekend, artist Lorenzo Bussi collaborated with cleaning workers to protest poor working conditions and low pay at the glitzy contemporary art museum.
Art
Colonial Fault Lines Fracture the Madrid Art Landscape
A show at the Prado valorizes cross-cultural flows while muffling ruptures, and two contemporary art exhibitions critique Hispanic legacies to investigate how art history occludes power.
Art
Kidlat Tahimik's Subversive Retelling of the Philippines' Colonial History
To showcase this work exactly 500 years after Magellan’s conquest of the Philippines in a space that, 134 years ago, was a “human zoo” of Indigenous people from the Philippines, is certainly poignant.
News
Move Over, Pollock: Research Confirms Neanderthals Made Splatter Paintings
Pigment found on rocks in a Spanish cave was applied by humans 60,000 years ago using splattering and blowing techniques.