CosmoCaixa breaks all-time public record with 1.2 million visitors, more than 50% more than the previous year
This Tuesday, the "la Caixa" Foundation took stock of the attendance at its centres and its cultural and scientific exhibitions during 2023. A total of 4,349,926 visitors have filled the CaixaForum centres and the CosmoCaixa Science Museum, and 3,807,567, the travelling exhibitions promoted by the "la Caixa" Foundation in 73 cities throughout Spain during this last year, which represents an overall increase of 13.19% over the previous year.
The season was characterised by the complementarity between art and science, building bridges between the two disciplines. The most visited centre was the CosmoCaixa Science Museum, which with 1,266,989 visitors broke the all-time attendance record for all "la Caixa" Foundation centres. The Barcelona museum has surpassed its audience of the previous year by 54.71% (818,940 visitors). Of the exhibitions opening in 2023 at this centre, Pixar Science, in collaboration with the Museum of Science in Boston and focusing on the mathematics, physics and technology behind the creative process of the animation studio, has attracted the most visitors, 434,789 people, followed by Dinosaurs of Patagonia, which has welcomed 185,228 visitors in just two months since its premiere on 26 October.
For its part, CaixaForum València, which opened its doors in June 2022, has registered more than 899,339 visitors in 2023 and has already accumulated a total of 1.5 million people who have come to its facilities to visit a unique and sustainable building that is an artistic space in itself and to travel to the heart of art and science with exhibitions such as Apollo 11. The Arrival of Man on the Moon or Mummies of Egypt. Rediscovering six lives, in collaboration with the British Museum, among many others.
CaixaForum Madrid welcomed 655,422 visitors in 2023. The exhibition Revered and feared. Female power in art and beliefs, still on at the centre until 14 January and in collaboration with the British Museum, has reached 109,771 visitors since its inauguration at the end of September, close in numbers to the most visited exhibitions, which shared the same exhibition space: Gods, magicians and sages, produced with works from the Contemporary Art Collection of the "la Caixa" Foundation, with 121,766 visitors, and Mammoth. The Ice Age Giant, with 120,060 visitors.
In the case of CaixaForum Barcelona, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary with the opening of a vertical forest, it received 483,852 visitors in 2023, and the most visited exhibition was Mummies of Egypt. Rediscovering six lives, with 94,190 visitors in 2023, in addition to the 30,277 that the exhibition received in December 2022, the month in which the exhibition opened. The second most visited exhibition of the year was The Century of Portraiture, in collaboration with the Prado Museum, with 70,769 visitors.
2023: The network of centres in figures
In total, 8,157,493 people visited the "la Caixa" Foundation's cultural activities, 4,349,926 at the centres and 3,807,567 at the travelling exhibitions. By centres, the CosmoCaixa Science Museum received 1,266,989 visitors; CaixaForum Barcelona, 483,852; CaixaForum Madrid, 655,422; CaixaForum València, 899,339; CaixaForum Zaragoza, 242,357; CaixaForum Seville, 899,339; CaixaForum Seville, 242,357; and CaixaForum Seville, 899,339. 357; CaixaForum Sevilla, 324,495; CaixaForum Palma, 183,609; CaixaForum Girona, 71,082; CaixaForum Lleida, 93,038; CaixaForum Tarragona, 82,210, and CaixaForum Macaya, 47,533.
The Deputy Director General of the "la Caixa" Foundation, Elisa Durán, gave a positive assessment of the 2023 figures for the network of centres: "We are very satisfied with the public indicators for this edition. Year after year shows that culture and science continue to attract thousands of visitors to our CaixaForum centres, the CosmoCaixa Science Museum and the travelling exhibitions. We are looking forward to a 2024 full of new experiences and a wide variety of proposals and disciplines whose aim is to promote integration and social cohesion through culture".
For the current academic year, the CaixaForum network has presented 34 exhibition titles that can be visited at the CaixaForum centres and the CosmoCaixa Science Museum, which will travel to more than 80 cities in Spain and Portugal. Specifically, there are 10 premieres, including the exhibitions Revered and feared. Feminine power in art and beliefs, Art and nature. A century of biomorphism, Dinosaurs of Patagonia and Interior Berlanga. The season runs under the slogan "We grow in culture" to offer the public windows that allow them to look into the past, live in the present and also face the future.
Numerous premieres in the first months of 2024
CaixaForum Madrid
The next exhibition to open at CaixaForum Madrid will be Art and Nature. A century of biomorphism, a new collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The exhibition will cover 100 years of dialogue between art and nature, a fruitful relationship that goes from surrealism to the present day: from Jean Arp, Kandinsky and Paul Klee to Jeremy Deller and Neri Oxman. This dialogue will become a starting point for rethinking our current links with the world of living beings, now that our environment is shaking under multiple crises (From 19 February to 9 June 2024).
In addition, in line with the exhibitions that fuse art and science, CaixaForum Madrid will demonstrate why the two elements are inseparable in the creation of many of your favourite animated films. In The Science of Pixar, developed by the Museum of Science in Boston in collaboration with Pixar Animation Studios, visitors will feel like they are part of Pixar's creative team as they interact with the exhibition's modules to give their endearing characters realistic movement and understand the importance of point of view and physics in lighting scenes, among many other learning experiences. (From 7 May to 8 September 2024.)
The new season will also see Dinosaurs of Patagonia, an exhibition organised in alliance with the Egidio Feruglio Palaeontological Museum, which will allow visitors to get closer to one of the regions of the world with some of the most primitive palaeontological remains of these animals. The exhibition will allow visitors to walk under an impressive replica of the largest known dinosaur, the Patagotitan majorum, on a route that shows the evolution of different species, their anatomy, their feeding habits and their habitat. (From 18 July to 3 November 2024).
The exhibition Revered and feared. Female power in art and beliefs, with major works from the British Museum, can still be visited until 14 January at the Madrid centre, while Horizon and limit. Visions of Landscape will continue its journey at the centre until 31 March, thanks to the Contemporary Art Collection of the "la Caixa" Foundation.
CosmoCaixa Science Museum
The month of March will see the premiere of Clik. New exploration space, a new permanent space designed to encourage curiosity and a love of science in children aged 4 to 11, who will be able to explore, experiment and discover issues related to air, water, construction, light and colour through interactive educational modules. (From March 2024).
Among its own productions, Music and Mathematics. A sonorous journey from chaos to the cosmos will explore at the CosmoCaixa Science Museum the relationship between both disciplines, which share abstraction, complexity and precision, as well as the need for great practice and creativity to work in them. The exhibition, with a markedly interactive character, will allow visitors to discover the links that unite them beyond these skills. Mathematics is present in all aspects of music, from the understanding of sound to its reproduction or interpretation, as can be seen thanks to various modules that will make it possible, among other things, to learn about the waves produced by the vibration of an instrument and play with different notes or timbres. (From 3 July 2024 to 19 January 2025).
In addition, until 2 June 2024, the museum is hosting Dinosaurs of Patagonia, an exhibition organised in collaboration with the Egidio Feruglio Palaeontological Museum, which features the largest dinosaur ever found to date.
CaixaForum Barcelona
In terms of exhibition premieres, highlights include Revered and Feared. Feminine power in art and beliefs, with major works from the British Museum. The exhibition, which will take us on a journey through 5,000 years of spiritual beliefs about women and femininity through ancestral and contemporary pieces, traces the spiritual influence of women throughout history and in six continents around the world, and forms a dialogue between sculptures, sacred objects and contemporary works of art (From 21 February to 16 June 2024).
CaixaForum Barcelona will also host the exhibition From the Border, by the curator Mei Huang, as part of the call for young curators Support for Creation'22. Comisart, which offers three innovative readings of the Contemporary Art Collection of the "la Caixa" Foundation and the MACBA collection. Specifically, From the Border starts from the idea of the physical limits between States to explore the current state of borders with a poetic discourse based on both collections (From 12 March to 24 June 2024).
One of the focuses of the new season will be the exhibition Horizon and Limit. Visions of Landscape, which will feature landscape works from the Contemporary Art Collection of the "la Caixa" Foundation, as well as including works on loan from other collections. This is an exhibition that extends the exhibition that opened at CaixaForum València and with which it shares the same title and concept, but on this occasion the focus is exclusively on contemporary art (From 30 April to 8 September 2024).
Interior Berlanga, another of the undisputed premieres of the season, will travel to CaixaForum Barcelona to offer an intimate and complete portrait of Luis García Berlanga, one of the most international Spanish filmmakers and author of a humorous and critical account of Spain in the second half of the 20th century. Conceived as a sequence shot with a narrative thread in the style of his films, this self-produced exhibition will uncover unknown and exciting stories about his life and work: from stereotypes to reality, from the most mediatic to the unknown. It will also reveal a large part of his personal archive thanks to the work of cataloguing, digitalisation and study that the "la Caixa" Foundation has carried out together with the Ministry of Culture and the Filmoteca Española (From 17 July to 3 November 2024).
Another of the innovative readings of the call for young curators Creation Support'22. Comisart is The Lady with the Lamp, by curators Mariona Moncunill and ferranElOtro. On this occasion, the exhibition combines artistic discourse with an interpretation of all the data generated by a work of art: cataloguing, image, artist, year, techniques, dimensions, conservation, location and history, among others. Thus, visitors will be able to discover an enormous amount of information hidden behind each piece of art and will go from "seeing" the exhibition to "reading" the less obvious data (from 24 July to 17 November 2024).
The exhibitions Art and Nature. A Century of Biomorphism, with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, until 14 January; The Tree of What You Don't Know Yet, until 11 February, and Top Secret. Cinema and Espionage, in collaboration with the Cinémàtheque Française, until 17 March, as well as the two permanent immersive experiences, Symphony. A Journey to the Heart of Music and Ravel's Bolero.
CaixaForum València
CaixaForum València will be the first centre to host Interior Berlanga, the undisputed premiere of the season, which offers an intimate and complete portrait of Luis García Berlanga, one of Spain's most international filmmakers and the author of a humorous and critical account of Spain in the second half of the 20th century. Conceived as a sequence shot with a narrative thread in the style of his films, this self-produced exhibition will uncover unknown and exciting stories about his life and work: from stereotypes to reality, from the most mediatic to the unknown. It will also reveal a large part of his personal archive thanks to the work of cataloguing, digitalisation and study that the "la Caixa" Foundation has carried out together with the Ministry of Culture and the Filmoteca Española (from 1 March to 9 June 2024).
Photography will also take centre stage at CaixaForum València, which will be hosting the exhibition Expanded Visions. Photography and experimentation, the result of collaboration with the Centre Pompidou. The exhibition traces the history of experimental photography from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day through a hundred works. The project proposes a reading of the experimental photographic current through a dialogue between historical and contemporary works, and presents the first photographic experiments of the famous William Klein alongside works by other artists such as Man Ray, Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, Vera Lutter, Ellen Carey, Barbara Morgan, Florence Henri and Brassaï, among others. (From 30 April to 1 September 2024.)
The exhibition XIX. The century of portraiture. Collections from the Museo del Prado. From the Enlightenment to Modernity will arrive at the centre on 10 July to delve into the transformation of the public image of people during the 19th century through major works from the Museo Nacional del Prado in all techniques and formats, from Goya to painters such as Federico de Madrazo, Eduardo Rosales, Ignacio Pinazo, Joaquín Sorolla and Ignacio Zuloaga. The exhibition offers visitors the chance to delve, through a genre of capital importance in Spanish painting, into the period that saw the birth of the economic and social structures that have shaped our contemporaneity. (From 10 July to 20 October 2024).
In collaboration with the British Museum, the centre is currently hosting the exhibition Mummies of Egypt. Rediscovering Six Lives until 21 January, and Colours of the World, which will continue to amaze visitors until 31 March with beautiful photographs by National Geographic authors.
CaixaForum Palma
The exhibition Tattoo. Art under the skin is coming to CaixaForum Palma this season to bring visitors closer to the origins of an ancestral practice that functions as an identity mark and has become an object of fascination and contemporary artistic creation. This collaboration with the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac addresses the multiple social and anthropological role of tattoos and analyses the resurgence of this phenomenon, which is now permanent and global. Using an ethnographic, geographical and artistic approach, it explores the different uses and functions of tattoos through the different eras and cultures (from 8 February to 2 June 2024).
In addition, the scientific exhibition Mammoth. The giant of the Ice Age will take visitors to the centre back to the ice age to learn about its most characteristic animals: mammoths. It features a real Siberian mammoth fossil in a very good state of preservation and shows what the habitat and lifestyle of these extinct animals were like four millennia ago, while opening up a reflection on our planet and its cycles. (From 3 July to 20 October 2024).
Until 7 January, the centre will continue to host Cinema and Fashion. By Jean Paul Gaultier from the collections of the Cinémathèque Française; The Garden of Anglada-Camarasa, until 25 August, which recreates the artist's interest in floral elements throughout his artistic career, and the immersive space Symphony.
CaixaForum Zaragoza
In February, in collaboration with the British Museum, the exhibition Mummies of Egypt. Rediscovering six lives, which will take visitors to the Nile Valley between 800 BC and 100 AD to discover the stories of six people who were mummified and whose lives we can now learn about thanks to cutting-edge, non-invasive technology that makes it possible to virtually unwrap the fragile remains of the mummies without damaging them. The latest advances in computer tomography and three-dimensional imaging have uncovered aspects such as the beliefs, illnesses, body care and diet of these individuals (28 February to 9 June 2024).
The Aragonese cultural centre will also host Top Secret. Cinema and espionage, in collaboration with the Cinémàtheque Française. The exhibition, which plays a game of mirrors between filmmakers and spies, both as recorders and "counterfeiters" of the world, displays a complete overview of this fascinating universe through works of art, original posters, photographs, film fragments and objects, a wide range of different types of pieces. Showing us the evolution of the spy genre in cinema and constantly linking it with a double game between myth and reality. The protagonists will be great real and fictional spies, from Mata Hari and Carrie Mathison to James Bond and Edward Snowden, with a special focus on women spies, considered the great forgotten ones (From 26 April to 25 August 2024).
On the other hand, Art and Nature. A Century of Biomorphism will explore, from the rich collections of the Centre Pompidou, 100 years of dialogue between art and nature, a fruitful relationship that stretches from Surrealism to the present day: from Jean Arp, Kandinsky and Paul Klee to Jeremy Deller and Neri Oxman. This dialogue will become a starting point for rethinking our current links with the world of living beings, now that our environment is shaking under multiple crises. (From 12 July to 27 October 2024).
The centre will continue to show the exhibitions XIX. The century of portraiture. Collections from the Museo del Prado, until 21 January, and Comics. Dreams and History, until 24 March, to vindicate this art form as a tool for reflection on the present and the future.
CaixaForum Sevilla
From 23 February, the centre will be hosting XIX. The century of portraiture. Collections from the Prado Museum. From the Enlightenment to Modernity, an unprecedented collection of portrait painting at the dawn of modernity. The exhibition delves into the transformation of the public image of people during the 19th century through major works from the Museo Nacional del Prado in all techniques and formats, from Goya to painters such as Federico de Madrazo, Eduardo Rosales, Ignacio Pinazo, Joaquín Sorolla and Ignacio Zuloaga. The exhibition offers visitors the chance to delve, through a genre of capital importance in Spanish painting, into the period that saw the birth of the economic and social structures that have shaped our contemporaneity (from 23 February to 9 June 2024).
In the field of photography, Colours of the World at CaixaForum Seville will allow visitors to admire the diversity of colours that characterise the Earth's landscapes thanks to the striking images taken by some of the best National Geographic photographers, and will also explore the meaning of each colour in different cultures (From 10 May to 25 August 2024).
On 18 July, the cultural centre will host Veneradas y temidas. Feminine power in art and beliefs, with major works from the British Museum. The exhibition, which will take us on a journey through 5,000 years of spiritual beliefs about women and femininity through ancestral and contemporary pieces, traces the spiritual influence of women throughout history in six continents around the world, generating a dialogue between sculptures, sacred objects and contemporary works of art. (From 18 July to 3 November 2024.)
Ravel's Bolero, an immersive experience with virtual reality technology that will reveal the instruments of the orchestra through Maurice Ravel's Bolero, will travel for the first time to CaixaForum Seville, where it will coexist on the same dates with Symphony. The latter is a journey through emotions and music by the conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. With these initiatives, the "la Caixa" Foundation continues its commitment, through virtual reality technology, to bring classical music to a wider audience. (From 10 July to 10 November 2024.)
Until 14 January, visitors can continue to discover the exhibition Tattoo. Art under the skin; as well as Expanded Visions. Photography and Experimentation, until 31 March in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou; and until 11 February, visitors will have the opportunity to see one of the seven monumental tapestries Miró created with the small montage Miró's Star until November 2024.
CaixaForum Girona
The centre will exhibit Print3D. Reprinting Reality, which explores the way in which this eminently collaborative technology has begun to be applied in very different fields, from medicine to art or construction, to enable productions with personalised designs and at scales and sizes that were unthinkable until a few years ago. (From 21 March to 25 August 2024).
Until 18 February, Homo ludens. Video games to understand the present will continue to turn CaixaForum Girona into a great space in which to reflect on video games as one of the most significant cultural manifestations of contemporary human beings.
CaixaForum Lleida
The exhibition Comic. Dreams and History will open this season at CaixaForum Lleida on 4 May to vindicate this art form as a tool for reflection on the present and the future, and as a powerful means of creating parallel realities, imaginary worlds, utopias and dystopias. This self-produced exhibition presents the work of the great universal masters as well as the classics of Spanish comics, with internationally renowned scriptwriters and cartoonists. Since its origins in the early 20th century, the comic has been a mirror of reality and has shown aspects that went unnoticed in the other arts. (From 4 May to 28 July 2024.)
Currently, until 1 April, the centre is hosting the exhibition Mirrors, inside and outside reality, which explores the reality "inside" and "outside" these objects, and invites visitors to discover how they have been used to build all kinds of instruments - including telescopes - with the aim of exploring the universe and understanding the origins of our planet.
CaixaForum Tarragona
The exhibition Homo ludens. Video games to understand the present will turn CaixaForum Tarragona into a large space in which to reflect on video games as one of the most significant cultural manifestations of the contemporary human being. The exhibition addresses the contributions of this powerful industry in the fields of science, design and art, as well as the way in which this form of entertainment has changed our identity and our way of relating to each other, and has penetrated all dimensions of life. It includes exhibitions of video games and contemporary artworks by artists such as Bill Viola and Monica Rikić, and offers a journey in which viewers are the protagonists and act as players in a gamified and participatory experience. (From 22 March to 28 July 2024.)
Until 18 February, visitors can continue to enjoy the exhibition Print3D. Reprinting reality, with more than 200 3D printed pieces, accompanied by audiovisual and interactive elements.
