The visitors who come to the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid you can now photograph theguernica‘, a decision of the new director of the center, Manuel Segade, which has been applied since September 1, with the sole condition of not using stabilization elements or flash. With this measure, Segade wants to improve the experience of seeing Picasso’s most famous painting, sources from the Museum have explained to EFE.

“Our intention was simply that it could be done normally, not to announce it to the press or anything because if photos are taken throughout the museum, in all the great museums in the world and, above all, that we live and are constantly mediated by cameras, when we go to a concert, when we go to any cultural event… well, we believe that It doesn’t make sense either that ‘Guernica’ doesn’t have the same iconicity it deserves”, Segade specified.

Speaking to EFE from Sao Paulo, where he is attending the inauguration of the Art Biennial, Segade has pointed out that people should be able to have their photo with ‘Guernica’ “as it happens with any other cultural phenomenon.” Actually, the ban affected the entire room in which the painting is located and it was in force to protect a very fragile work, which was hung from the walls of the Reina Sofía in 1992 from the Casón del Buen Retiro where it had been exhibited since the painting arrived in Spain in 1981 after 42 years at the New York MoMA.

the exceptions

It was the only area of ​​the museum that visitors could not photograph, but now the prohibition has been removed because technological means have changed and they no longer endanger the work, the sources have specified. It is a way of giving more facilities to the visitor so that they can do like Mick Jagger, who visited the museum in June 2022 and took a picture in front of the painting, an image highly criticized on social networks given the exceptional nature of the event.

Of course, you can not use any type of stabilizer no selfie stick no tripod no flash. And the capacity will continue to be controlled as before. In this way, only three photographic collages by Oskar Schlemmer remain in the Reina Sofía, which cannot be photographed because his heirs do not allow it.

“I would like us to reach one hundred percent photographic accessibility, above all, for that young audience that also lives filtered by a screen. I think it is also important to pay attention to their way of approaching reality”, added Segade.