Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl

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The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl (MACEW) is a museum for contemporary art in Puerto de la Cruz ( Tenerife ). The museum is run by the Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias . The name Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Museum of Contemporary Art) comes from the history of the museum. There are also works by artists who were part of the European avant-garde in their time but who died more than 50 years ago.

Development history

The predecessor institution of the museum was opened as Sala Eduardo Westerdahl on March 28, 1953 in a room of the new building of the Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias . This first permanent exhibition of contemporary art in Spain had an initial inventory of 26 works by twelve artists from six countries.

The exhibition was open daily from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Some of the exhibits came from the holdings of the Arte surrealista exhibition that took place in May 1935 in the Ateneo in Santa Cruz de Tenerife . Further pictures had been given to Eduardo Westerdahl by the creators of the works of art since 1949 in order to exhibit them in a museum on the Canary Islands . A third group of pictures was contributed by friends of Westerdahl, especially former employees of the editorial staff of Gaceta de Arte .

In the course of the following years, the collection was expanded through further donations. First and foremost, these were works by artists who visited Tenerife, worked temporarily there or were presented in solo exhibitions. By 1958, the Westerdahl collection had grown to include 43 works by 32 artists from eleven nations in Europe, North and South America.

In 1958, as part of a redesign and change in the use of the building of the Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias , problems arose with the proper storage of the pictures. This prompted Eduardo Westerdahl to bring some of the pictures back to his place of residence, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and to show them there together with other works from his collection. This happened in a temporary exhibition in the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes de Santa Cruz de Tenerife . After that, the works of art were no longer shown publicly for the time being.

After two years of renovation, the museum in Puerto de la Cruz was to reopen in 1960. However, the basic requirements for lighting were missing. Even the essential conservation requirements for an art exhibition that one saw at that time were not there. In addition, there was a lack of staff to make the exhibition accessible to a larger audience. Nevertheless, temporary solo exhibitions were held in the rooms in the following years. Eduardo Westerdahl only took part in the organization of these exhibitions in individual cases. This usually happened by establishing a connection with the artists, writing the texts for the exhibition catalogs or giving a speech at the opening of the exhibition.

In 1968 the exhibition hall was definitely closed. There were also no temporary exhibitions for the time being. In 1984 Ana Luisa González Reimers and Federico Castro Morales compiled a catalog of the art holdings of the Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias . They came to the conclusion that a large number of the pictures were in a deplorable condition.

Ascent to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl in the Casa de la Real Aduana

It was not until October 11, 2001 that the Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias was able to present the entire Westerdahl collection in Puerto de La Cruz at three different exhibition locations in Puerto de la Cruz. There were three exhibitions at different locations. In the Casa de la Real Aduana (the historic customs house that was to become the new location of the permanent exhibition), works that had already been exhibited between 1953 and 1965 were on view. In the exhibition room of the Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias , under the title Figura y paisaje. Puerto de la Cruz, sede y destino de artistas (1965–1975) (Shape and landscape. Puerto de la Cruz, place of residence and destination of artists) works were shown that were made by external artists in Puerto de la Cruz and left to the museum . At a third exhibition location, in the art hall of the Caja Canarias (Canarian Savings Bank), new works that had been included in the collection since the 1950s were on view.

Finally, on June 28, 2007, today's Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl was opened in its current form on the 1st floor of the Casa de la Real Aduana directly at the port of the city of Puerto de la Cruz. The location in the center of the city, which is characterized by tourism, in a listed building from the 17th century, is also suitable to interest foreign - especially German - visitors in the exhibition. The city's tourist information office is located in the same building. The regulations of the monument protection, which prevent the installation of air conditioning, and the location of the building directly on the sea mean that the pictures suffer from the humid, salty air. It is therefore planned, as part of the construction of a new cultural center in the city center, to create new rooms for the museum and an international meeting point with studios for foreign artists.

Stock exhibited today

Today (in 2012) the museum is divided into four sections:

This structure also reflects the various goals of the museum. Tenerife, which is shaped by tourism, has always had close - mostly very personal - connections to the art of Europe and America. These connections can be seen in the exhibition on the one hand in the works of Canarian artists, on the other hand in those of the European and American artists who Some of them created on the occasion of their stays in the Canary Islands and which they have given to the Westerdahl Collection. The museum also organized various exhibitions of the Eduardo Westerdahl collection in other museums.

Web links

literature

  • Pilar Carreño Corbella: Eduardo Westerdahl . Ediciones del Umbral, Santa Cruz de Tenerife 2002, ISBN 84-87340-63-6 , p. 206 (Spanish).
  • Manuel Hernández González: Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias 1953-2002 . Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias, Canarias 2003, ISBN 84-607-6483-4 , p. 155 (Spanish).
  • Ana Luisa González Reimers, Federico Castro Morales, Celestino Celso Hernández: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl . Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias, 2010, ISBN 978-84-613-7912-5 , p. 151 (Spanish).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manuel Hernández González: Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias 1953-2002 . Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias, Canarias 2003, ISBN 84-607-6483-4 , p. 12 .
  2. ↑ Federico Castro Morales in Ana Luisa González Reimers, Federico Castro Morales, Celestino Celso Hernández: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl . Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias, Puerto de la Cruz 2010, ISBN 978-84-613-7912-5 , p. 26 .
  3. ^ Morales in Ana Luisa González Reimers, Federico Castro Morales, Celestino Celso Hernández: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl . Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias, Puerto de la Cruz 2010, ISBN 978-84-613-7912-5 , p. 26 .
  4. ^ Morales in Ana Luisa González Reimers, Federico Castro Morales, Celestino Celso Hernández: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl . Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias, 2010, ISBN 978-84-613-7912-5 , p. 30 .
  5. ^ Morales in Ana Luisa González Reimers, Federico Castro Morales, Celestino Celso Hernández: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl . Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias, 2010, ISBN 978-84-613-7912-5 , p. 38 .
  6. ↑ Hernández in Ana Luisa González Reimers, Federico Castro Morales, Celestino Celso Hernández: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl . Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias, 2010, ISBN 978-84-613-7912-5 , p. 69 .
  7. ↑ Manuel Hernández González: Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias 1953-2002 . Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias, Canarias 2003, ISBN 84-607-6483-4 . P. 72.
  8. ^ Naima Pérez: Parque San Francisco. La Opinion, November 3, 2011, accessed April 6, 2012 (Spanish).

Coordinates: 28 ° 25 ′ 4.8 ″  N , 16 ° 33 ′ 0.1 ″  W.