Provincial Museum Malaga to open after a 40 Million euro Refit
Following a 6-year wait and a 40 Million Euro renovation of the Palacio de la Aduana, the city of Malaga is finally looking forward to the opening of its Provincial Museum. Work is nearing its end. When the museum finally opens its doors, Malaga Province will have yet another cultural attraction to its name. Increasingly, visitors come to Malaga Province not just for the traditional sun, beach and nightlife holiday, but to enjoy its manifold art collections, museums and lively art scene.
It's taken a total of 18 years for the project to really get off the ground. Overseen by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, the renovation of the Palacio de la Aduana has taken six long years, at the end of which the Ministry aims to hand the palacio's management over to the Junta de Andalucía. The Junta confirmed publicly that the museum will be open to the public before this year is out, provided the Government keep to their end of the bargain.
Luciano Alsonso, regional head of education, culture and sport, explained the budget for the running of the museum will be sourced from a combination of public institutions and private organisations. Run along similar lines as the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts, Malaga's latest cultural hot spot has funding of about one million euros in place to install art works as soon as the palacio is ready for occupation.
Prado Disperso in Action
Some of the artworks displayed will be on loan from the Prado Museum, including around 121 masterpieces by artists such as Luis de Morales, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, José Moreno Carbonero, Antonio del Castillo Saavedra and Joaquín Sorolla.
“The Prado Museum fundamentally supports the future of the Museum of Malaga. The presence of this partnership establishes an important line of collaboration and exchange across the ministry of education, culture and sport, and the Junta de Andalucía’s ministry of culture,” said a spokesman from the Prado Museum.
The partnership between Malaga and Madrid is part of the "Prado disperso" project, which aims to distribute around 3,100 artworks across Spain to a number of locations. Andalucía has been the undisputed winner in securing the lion share of the national museum's collection, for the region will exhibit 419 artworks normally housed in Madrid.
Getting ready for the grand Opening
While Palacio de la Aduana is being furnished and fitted with explanatory display cards for its display cases, several archaeological finds have already been deposited in the museum, among them a Phoenician tomb of warrior, which was unearthed on Calle Jinetes and a Phoenician hypogeum, which is a subterranean mass burial site discovered on the western bank of the Guadelmedina River on Calle Mármoles. Experts believe the mass burial site dates back to a period falling between the sixth and second century B.C.
Lovingly restored by experts from the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage, these enormous exhibits had to be lifted into the Palacio by crane.
Living in Andalusia
Life in Spain's southernmost region is getting decidedly more cultured and sophisticated. Resorts like Marbella, Estepona and Fuengirola for example have long argued that a different type of holiday home buyer and tourist, namely the affluent and discerning kind, will transform the region's fortunes and provide far better long-term prospects than the kind of expats the Costa del Sol has seen as investors and holidaymakers over the past 30 years.
Owing to this change in tourism strategy, Malaga has now firmly established itself as a city break destination to be reckoned with - rivalling Bilbao and even Madrid with its art collections, museums and vibrant cultural scene. A new breed of house buyers and tourist is arriving daily, now coming from Scandinavia, Middle East, Belgium or China. They clearly expect to find a far more sophisticated local offering than beaches with wall-to-wall bars, shoddily built villas and noisy nightclubs.
Perhaps in decades to come, Malaga's Provincial Museum will showcase the history of tourism in Andalusia, and if it does, beer-swilling tourists wearing shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops to every social venue will probably feature as exhibits in glass cases, nostalgic reminders of how things used to be at the Costa del Sol.