The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía ( MNCARS ), commonly known as Museo Reina Sofía , a museum Spanish of art of the twentieth century and contemporary , based in the city of Madrid .
It took as its headquarters the old General Hospital of Madrid , a large neoclassical building from the 18th century located in the Atocha area , near the homonymous train station and the Metro Art Station. This hospital was initially designed by José de Hermosilla and later continued by Francesco Sabatini , and is currently known as the Sabatini building in honor of this Italian architect. The museum as such was inaugurated in 1992, although the building had already housed temporary exhibitions in previous years. In September 2005, the institution's facilities were expanded with the opening of the Nouvel building at the beginning of the Ronda de Atocha .
The Reina Sofía is the southern vertex of what is known as the Madrid Art Triangle , which includes two other famous museums: the Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza .
The permanent collection of the museum highlights a nucleus of works by great Spanish artists of the 20th century, especially Pablo Picasso , Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró , widely represented and with some of their best works. The collections of surrealist art are also very relevant (with works by Francis Picabia , René Magritte , Óscar Domínguez or Yves Tanguy , in addition to the aforementioned Miró and Dalí), of cubism (which to the Picasso collection adds names such as Juan Gris , María Blanchard , Georges Braque ,Robert Delaunay , Fernand Léger or Albert Gleizes ), and the presence of artists from the New Figuration , such as Francis Bacon or Antonio Saura .
Along with these authors there are many others of diverse tendencies as prominent as Lucio Fontana , Yves Klein , Diego Rivera , Alexander Calder , Roberto Matta , Mark Rothko , Antonio López García , Antoni Tàpies , Miquel Barceló or Sam Francis .
The number of visitors has progressively increased to become the most visited museum in Spain and one of the most visited in the world. These data and active procurement policy have placed him in a position of privilege among international contemporary art museums. According to The Art Newspaper , based on data provided by the museums themselves, the number of visits in 2016 was 3 646 598, a historical record, placing the Reina Sofía as the most visited art museum in Spain and the eleventh in the world, achieving beat MoMA and Prado .
The origins of the MNCARS go back to the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) , an institution created in 1894 and inaugurated four years later, which was located in the southwest corner of the National Library and Museum Palace . It started with the works of 19th century artists after Goya , although over the years new pieces were incorporated, many of them 20th century paintings, which were gaining a growing role in the collection and simultaneously relegating to the 19th century ones. which were increasingly seen as a drag on the image of modernity that the museum was intended to give. In this way, a group of artists, led by the architect José Luis Fernández del Amo, achieved that by Decree of October 9, 1951 the Museum of Modern Art was divided into two, the National Museum of Art of the XIX Century and the National Museum of Contemporary Art , without changing location, keeping the Museum of Contemporary Art with the lower part of the headquarters and the XIX with the upper part. Fernández del Amo was its first director, a position in which he remained until 1958. However, in 1968 both collections were reunified, constituting with them the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art (MEAC), although the unification was ephemeral, since by Ministerial Order of February 5, 1971 the "Section of Art of the XIX Century" of the Prado Museum was created, which meant the transfer of the works of the XIX century to this museum, which They were exhibited in the Casón del Buen Retiro from June 24 of that year, when said section was inaugurated, while the 20th century pieces remained in the MEAC until its dissolution and its integration into the Reina Sofía.
The Museo del Traje building was originally built as the headquarters of the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art (MEAC).
Subsequently, the collection moved to its new headquarters in the Ciudad Universitaria de Madrid . In the first four months of 1991, all the works that were in it, 8900, were transferred to the MNCARS building. The ground floor of the Ciudad Universitaria building became attached to the National Exhibition Center, and the rest to the Museum of the Spanish People, integrated since 1993 into the National Museum of Anthropology . Since 2004, after a restoration, the entire building has served as the headquarters of the Costume Museum .
Installed in the Sabatini building, the old General Hospital of Madrid , which was rehabilitated by Antonio Fernández Alba , José Luis Íñiguez de Onzoño and Antonio Vázquez de Castro , the museum was officially inaugurated on May 26, 1986 as the Reina Sofía Art Center , in honor to Queen Sofia of Spain .
Its initial objective was to host temporary exhibitions (hence its name as a center and not as a museum ), but two years later, through Royal Decree 535/1988, of May 27, it became a state museum, taking the name of Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum. It opened its doors to the public on September 10, 1992, with artistic funds from the MEAC. Its new status as a national museum led to a very active purchasing and borrowing policy, in order to display a solid repertoire of Spanish art in connection with international trends.
The institution is an autonomous body under the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports . In 2013 the museum's own statute was approved.
The need for more space led to the construction of a new building in 2001, commissioning its construction to the architect Jean Nouvel ; the extension was inaugurated in September 2005. The new spaces represented an increase of more than 60% compared to the surface of the old building: from 51,297 m² to 84,048 m².
The Reina Sofía Museum is divided, therefore, into two buildings, called Sabatini and Nouvel , plus two exhibition venues in the Retiro Park : the Crystal Palace and the Velázquez Palace , both built by the Spanish architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco . These last two venues host temporary exhibitions or special presentations by artists or works from the museum's collection
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