The MNAC takes the street

The Museum of National Art of Catalunya (MNAC) has turned the streets of Barcelona into a giant outdoor art gallery. From now until the 30th of November you can see exact digital replicas of 33 of great works from the great museum´s permanent collection.
Strolling down the Avenida Diagonal, the Rambla de Catalunya, the Paseo de Gracia, or right across the Ramblas in the Gothic Quarter you can search the walls and nooks and crannies of Barcelona for reproductions of iconic works of Toulouse-Lautrec, Dali, Velazquez, and Picasso and the list goes on and on. It all gives you the feeling of strolling through a large open-air museum.
Our personal favorites here at the hotel are “The tandem bicycle” and “the car”, two emblematic paintings by the great Catalan modernist painter, Ramon Casas. They used to adorn the walls of Els Quatre Gats, one of Picasso's old haunts, and are found near the historic bar-restaurant and very close to the hotel.
The MNAC is in the mood for celebrating; its 75th birthday is the perfect excuse for something really big, like entering into an artistic “dialog with the city.” Providing the technology is HP Latex which developed the cutting-edge printing innovations in nearby San Cugat. Their high-resolution graphics for outdoor display puts them in the vanguard of green technology. It is one of their innovations to reduce our carbon footprint. They've done similar shows in New York and London and now it´s Barcelona's turn.
So come to Barcelona, download the map and check out this innovative exhibit which takes great art right to the streets.
For more info check out here.

What to do in Barcelona? (2 of 4 parts)

6. Climb up the magical Montjuïic

Montjuïic is perfect for a leafy stroll with great views, but hard to reach so is less populated by tourists. Scattered across the landward side are buildings from the 1992 Olympic Games, including Santiago Calatrava's Olympic needle, while facing the sea is the lighthouse and vast cemetery. The Castell de Montjuïc was the burial place for the medieval Jewish community. Energetic visitors can climb to the top of the hill, which is just a short distance from the Olympic stadium and Jardi Botànic. The Plaça Espanya provides the most popular access to the park. Here, you can visit the Pavelló Mies van der Rohe, the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya and cultural centre CaixaForum.

7. Walk on the arty side

In Barcelona, a walk in the park is not just a relaxing experience but an artistic journey as well. Stroll round the leafy gardens of the Teatre Grec and then head to the Fundació Joan Miró, one of the greatest museums in the world. It's home to a collection of over 225 paintings, 150 sculptures and graphic pieces by the Spanish surrealist artist, along with a number of works by his contemporaries. Wander over to the Jardins Laribal, meticulously designed by the French landscape artist Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier. Don't miss the Tres Pins nursery, where plants are grown for the city's municipal parks and gardens, or forget to tip your hat to the bronze statue of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in the Plaça de Dante.

8. Revel in the Raval

Like Paris, Barcelona has a literary flavour. In this city, many writers have been inspired by the lower Raval, generally referred to as the Barrio Chino, a name coined by an American journalist due to its underworld feel in the 1920s. Haunted by drifters and prostitutes, the seedy ghetto forms a strangely glamorous setting for Jean Genet's existential novel The Thief's Journal (1949) and provides the backdrop for the civil war novel The Palace (1962) by Nobel prize-winner Claude Simon and The Margin by André Pieyre de Mandiargues (1967), which was made into a film.
You can browse through books at the cosy bar of Café de les Delicies and catch a poetry reading at The Quiet Man.

9. Be a model photographer

Barcelona is a picturesque place, so even if you're new to the art of photography, the city still manages to look good. Some scenes, of course, are more photogenic than others. To spot a few, wander through Almacenes del Pilar. Here, you'll find a glorious array of fabrics and accessories for traditional Spanish costumes on display in a Bohemian interior dating back to 1886. For mouth-watering photographs, head to the city's most central food market and gourmand's pilgrimage La Boqueria along La Rambla, where you'll discover layers of fruit and veg, olives and herbs in full colour. For a bird's eye view, ascend the Torre de Collserola, Norman Foster's galactic communications tower.

10. Chow down fresh seafood

No one leaves Barcelona without sucking on an oyster. The city toasts the fine Galician restaurant Botafumeiro in Gràcia for its fantastic assortment of seafood, served by impeccably dressed waiters against a backdrop of nautical motifs. Cal Pep in the Born is known for its trifásico, a mélange of fried whitebait, squid rings and shrimps, and exquisite little tallarines (wedge clams). The Barceloneta restaurant Can Ramonet displays a spectacular haul of fresh seafood every day, which is likely to tempt you if you're piscatorially inclined.

Beach Volley Ball on... a mountain

Everything is possible in Barcelona, even a beach volleyball match without a beach, at least, without a natural one.
From 8th – 13th September the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc (la Font Màgica de Montjuïc) will be home, for the second year running, to the women’s stop of the Swatch FIVB Beach Volley World Tour’09.
The event will take place in front of the Museu Nacional d`Art de Catalunya (MNAC), where an artifical beach, a stadium for 3,500 spectators, and additional playing courts will be set up.
So, if you want a beach environment and iconic medieval buildings, all in the same place, this event is for you.
And it is free.

Shots from the civil war: Robert Capa & Gerda Taro

From July 7 to September 27 the MNAC (Museu Nacional d´Art de Catalunya) will present the exhibition "Això es la guerra!" (This is war!), with the simultaneous shows by Robert Capa, “the greatest war photographer in the world”, and his brilliant, vivacious girlfriend Gerda Taro, another pioneer in photojournalism.

Robert Capa is the gold standard for all photojournalists. His most famous image “Death of a Militiaman”,“the greatest of all war photographs”, shows an anti-Franco militiaman collapsing into death after being shot in the heart. This and about 200 other war photographs from World War II, the first Israeli-Arab War, and the Indochinese War form “This is War! Robert Capa in Action” an exposition which will finally will reach Barcelona after touring New York, London, and Milan.

A simultaneous exhibition by Gerda Taro assembles 83 of her photographs along with other documentary material. Her extraordinary sensibility and ability to capture the intimate and immediate during the horrifying depersonalization of war was cut tragically cut short when she was mortally injured during the Battle of Brunette in 1937.

This is your chance to view their extraordinary body of work. You can feel their passionate commitment, their willingness to share the hardships of the people they were photographing and their extraordinary ability to keep their ideals without losing respect for individuals.