The museums of the Ministry of Culture and Sports increased their collections during 2018 with the acquisition of 1,000 new cultural assets for a value of 855,000 euros.
It is mostly letters, designs, drawings and lithographs that are already part of the documentary heritage that is kept in these institutions. The sixteen centers dependent on the Department also received 421 goods from private donations, with a valuation of close to 200,000 euros.
The 10 most relevant works can be known today on the Culture website (New acquisitions 2018), in addition to a document with information about the collections of the Ministry's museums during the past year (Our Museums at a glance: Collections).
Among the shopping highlights San José with baby Jesus, Pedro de Mena, a polychrome wooden sculpture of the seventeenth century, which has been the most valuable piece acquired by Culture for its museums in 2018 (€ 150,000). It has been incorporated into the stable collection of the National Sculpture Museum of Valladolid, where it will complete the work of the sculptor from Granada.
Another of the most important assets is a coin of four escudos of Felipe V, from the last series of gold made in the mint of Cuenca in 1725, of which only four copies are known, one already preserved in the numismatic collection of the Museum Arqueológico Nacional, the museum that will exhibit this new acquisition.
In the field of design, Culture has purchased for the National Museum of Decorative Arts a prototype of the armchair Fauteuil B301 (1928-1929), created by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, an icon of modern design.
Among the documentary collections stands out the acquisition of a letter from Joaquín Sorolla to the ceramist Ruiz de Luna. The letter is the response of the painter, great connoisseur and collector of ceramics, to another preserved in the archive of the Sorolla Museum where he was invited to visit the ceramic factory of Talavera, owned by the company Ruiz de Luna, Guijo y Cía.
The Costume Museum has received almost half of the donations
The museums of Culture have also received 421 donations, of which 186, 44% of the total, have been allocated to the Costume Museum-Ethnographic Heritage Research Center (CIPE), followed by the Museum of America (121).
Among the donated works stand out the portraits of Pilar Ordeig and Jacinto Galaup (1845), by Rafael Tegeo, assigned to the Museum of Romanticism, and that have recently been exhibited in the monographic exhibition dedicated to the painter.
The Costume Museum-CIPE has received an album of stickers from the league championship 1967-1968, which has been integrated into the museum's collections, aimed at recovering and preserving the collective memory of Spanish society through the acquisition of assets that are part of of everyday life.
More than 1,500 assets were part of 130 temporary exhibitions
The museums of the Ministry of Culture and Sports lent in 2018 more than 1,500 works that traveled to 130 exhibitions, 100 in Spain and 30 abroad. On the other hand, more than 2,000 were lent to be part of the temporary exhibitions organized throughout the year.