We really haven't done much recently partly through work, partly through sloth and partly because it is relatively unpleasant out when the sun isn't shining. Weekends in Culebrón tend towards tasks of one sort and another or maybe the exact opposite as we take the opportunity to forget about chores and work.Yesterday though Maggie was keen that we did something other than vegetate. She suggested a trip to the seaside at Santa Pola but I baulked at travelling the 60 or so kilometres each way for no real reason. I was happy to go somewhere but with a bit more purpose. In the end we settled on going to Alicante because there were a number of exhibitions on.
We saw the photos of Alfredo Calíz at the FNAC shop in Alicante (nice use of colour but not many snaps) and later, at MUBAG (Fine Arts Museum) we saw a show that covered the Spanish Avant Garde from the 1960s to the 80s - informalism, abstraction, op art, hyper realism etc. Next it was MACA (Contemporary Art) where there was a show to celebrate the 50th anniversary of an art movement that called itself Arte Normativa (the translation eludes me - Art by Rules maybe) which was a Spanish geometric abstract movement of the 1950s. Just to finish off we went to a remarkably tedious showing of Russian Sacred Art at one of the exhibition spaces run by the charitable arm of a savings bank.
Something I noticed was the staffing. The busiest space was the Savings Bank where there was one security guard at the entrance, in FNAC where the show was in the concourse outside the shop surrounded by coffee bars there was nobody obvious looking out for the exhibit at all. In both MUBAG and MACA only one large space was open for viewing but in both places, which are local authority run museums, there were two people on the welcome desk and two more museum staff keeping an eye on us as we looked around. I think there was also a uniformed security guard in each foyer, there usually is. Quite different staffing levels between the public and private sector then.
Good do though Alicante. Nice to do a bit of culture vulture stuff for a change.
nice to hear that your flying the flag for culture. two things occur to me: one, that shazzer was talking out of her ample arse (tho' not anymore apparently) when complaining about sta pola and elche and alicante being a cultural desert, especially in the art dept. even that well know philistine ms warren was wont to attend do's of a vultural nature whilst dragging the offspring along. and two, i pottered across the road to a much trumpetted impressionist exhibition here a couple of years ago and was captivated by a very slight, pretty, uniformed girl, not at all discreetly wearing a large revolver! there wasn't even a manet or a monet there, but a gun toting girlie, SI!!
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