Museums organise visits and itineraries with a female gaze

The activities of the city’s museums in March, especially from the 8th onwards, will have a mullioned accent. See here some of the proposals.

We begin at the Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Pedralbes, because on 8 March at 5 pm there will be a guided tour of Pedralbes, a feminine scene of power. It builds a history of the monastery with its own names: Elisenda de Montcada and Francesca Portella in the 14th century, Maria d’Aragó and Teresa de Cardona in the 16th century, and Sister Eulàlia Anzizu and Maria de la Concepció Baldric in the 19th century. Admission is free, but prior registration is required. Also on the afternoon of the 8th, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) will host a lecture by the Spanish-Iranian political scientist Anahita Nassir entitled Protests in Iran, beyond the veil. It will begin at 5.30 pm.

You can also take advantage of the day to visit the exhibition at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) Graphic Constellation Young Women Authors of Avant-garde Comics. It presents new authors who experiment with styles and languages, who break the mould of comic strips and who share a critical and humorous view of the world. Precisely on 8M, at 5pm, and as part of a programme of visits for the general public entitled “With or without sugar: conversations in museums”, created by a group of museum spaces in the city, there will be a guided tour of the exhibition.

At the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona on 9 March there will be a storytelling event dedicated to the biologist and former director of the Museum Anna Omades. The activity is part of the cycle “Little Stories, Great Women ” organised by 9 museums. And March 23 will see the opening of the exhibition Essential. Workers at the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona, from 1917 to 1987, which focuses on the women who worked in this museum from more than a century ago until the end of the Transition.

At the Maritim Museum of Barcelona (MMB) they will invite you to put on a pair of lilac glasses on the afternoon of 9 March. The aim of the activity, entitled A lilac sea, is to analyse the exhibition Catalunya offshore, to see how the role of women is explained, or not explained. Two days later, the MMB will host the third meeting of the women sailors’ group Lobas de Mar, with a day that will include a guided tour of the museum, a round table discussion and a trip out to sea in different boats. For its part, the National Museum of Art of Catalunya organises, among other activities in March, Women you had to be, medieval itinerary on the 12th and 26th, and Women you had to be, modern itinerary on the 19th. The museum’s 8M slogan is “We are women 365 days a year”.

The History Museum of Barcelona (MUHBA) offers different itineraries. On 12 March (and also on 9 April and 21 May), the exhibition entitled Out with hunger: women and revolt in the shadow of industrialisation. It vindicates the figure of Josepa Vilaret and the leading role of women in the social revolts and healing work at the end of the 18th century. On 26 March (and also on 30 September) the literary itinerary The Barcelona of Mercè Rodoreda, and on 11 March and 11 April Women and rearguard, on the spaces of productive work, the spaces of healing and the spaces of political struggle played by women during the Civil War. On 18 March and 7 May, there will be the urban itinerary Women with drive at the an empathy for medieval Barcelona. On the other hand, the MUHBA is also organising, but at the Pati Llimona Civic Centre, a symposium on 13 March under the title Bàrcino in femenine. Being a woman and a mother in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. As for the Picasso Museum, on 18 March there will be a guided tour entitled The Inhabitants of the Picasso Museum.

On Tuesdays 15, 22 and 29 March, the second edition of the cycle “Three Days in March” will be held at El Born CCM. This year, with the slogan “Women, dance, laugh, resist”, the aim is to bring out the resistance and also the joy implicit in Emma Goldman’s words, “if I can’t dance, I’m not interested in your revolution”. The cycle will include a theatrical performance, a monologue and a dialogue that speak of the resistance of women around the world.