Carmen Thyssen wants her Barcelona museum to be like this

BarcelonaThe Ecology, Urban Planning, Mobility and Housing Commission of the Barcelona City Council has approved this Tuesday the first step to radically transform the Palau Marcet and turn it into the new Carmen Thyssen Museum BarcelonaThe building, which had previously housed the Comedia cinema, which closed its doors in January 2024, is owned by the Pla i Planàs families. The existing building, designed by architect Toni Sabater, currently has four levels (a semi-basement, two floors, and a mezzanine), but will expand substantially if the modification to the metropolitan master plan is approved.

Only the main facades, which would be restored, and the chamfered corner will be preserved. The rest, which is considered to have no heritage value, will be demolished. The vertical expansion will consist of two new volumes, and the proposed heights, different for each of the added volumes, would be similar to those of the buildings on Gran Via and Passeig de Gràcia. The new Carmen Thyssen Museum Barcelona aims to become a landmark and one of the most visited in Barcelona, such as the Picasso Museum, the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC), and Macba. It has not been specified which works it will house, but the focus will be on Catalan, Spanish, and international art from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

In February 2022, after years of negotiations and back-and-forth, Carmen Thyssen reached an agreement with the Ministry of Culture whereby she and her son Borja will rent out her collection of 330 works, 179 of which were already on display at the Museo Thyssen-5, for fifteen years. Thyssen also has a museum in her name in Malaga, where 19th-century Spanish painting can be seen, and another in Andorra. The Baroness also has a group of works on deposit at the MNAC and the Espai Thyssen in Sant Feliu de Guíxols.

Opposition by the Commons and the ERC

During the committee meeting, the First Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning, Laia Bonet, defended the project because the future museum "strengthens Barcelona as a cultural landmark." Although the vote was passed with the votes of Junts and the PP, the Barcelona en Comú and ERC groups rejected the project as conceived. In the case of the Comú, they rejected it because they did not believe it was the cultural model the city needs, and in the case of the Republicans, they believed the proposal did not sufficiently respect its heritage.

The project, the work of German firm Casper Mueller Kneer Architects and Catalan firm OUA, still has a long way to go. After being initially approved this Tuesday, it must be displayed to the public for a month and then submitted to the full municipal council for provisional approval.