The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) is the official name of Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

's national museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

 of 20th century art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 (informally shortened to the Museo Reina Sofía, Queen Sofia Museum, El Reina Sofia, or simply The Sofia). The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992 and is named for Queen Sofia of Spain. It is located in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, near the Atocha train and metro

Madrid Metro

The Madrid Metro is a metro system serving the city of Madrid, capital of Spain. The system is the sixth longest metro in the world though Madrid is approximately the fiftieth most populous metropolitan area in the world...

 stations, at the southern end of the so-called Golden Triangle of Art

Golden Triangle of Art

The Golden Triangle of Art is made up of three important art museums that are close to each other in the centre of Madrid, Spain. They form a general triangle shape upon a map.The three art museums are:...

 (located along the Paseo del Prado

Paseo del Prado

The Paseo del Prado is one of the main boulevards in Madrid, Spain. It runs north-south between the Plaza de Cibeles and the Plaza del Emperador Carlos V , with the Plaza de Cánovas del Castillo lying approximately in the middle...

 and also comprising the Museo del Prado

Museo del Prado

The Museo del Prado is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It features one of the world's finest collections of European art, from the 12th century to the early 19th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection, and unquestionably the best single collection of...

 and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, or in Spanish Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, is an art museum near the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain. It is known as a part of the "Golden Triangle of Art", which also includes the Prado and the Reina Sofia galleries...

).

The museum is mainly dedicated to Spanish art. Highlights of the museum include excellent collections of Spain's two greatest 20th century masters, Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

 and Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

. Certainly the most famous masterpiece in the museum is Picasso's painting Guernica

Guernica (painting)

Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War...

. The Reina Sofía collection has works by artists such as: Juan Gris

Juan Gris

José Victoriano González-Pérez , better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life...

, Joan Miró

Joan Miró

Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...

, Julio González

Julio González (sculptor)

Juli González i Pellicer was a Catalan abstract and cubist painter and sculptor.-Biography:Born in Barcelona, as a young man he worked with his older brother, Joan, in his father's metal smith workshop. Both brothers took evening classes in art at the Escuela de Bellas Artes...

, Eduardo Chillida

Eduardo Chillida

Eduardo Chillida Juantegui, or Eduardo Txillida Juantegi in Basque, was a Spanish Basque sculptor notable for his monumental abstract works.-Early life and career:...

, Antoni Tàpies

Antoni Tàpies

Antoni Tàpies i Puig, 1st Marquess of Tàpies is a Catalan painter. He is one of the most famous European artists of his generation. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting...

, Pablo Gargallo

Pablo Gargallo

Pablo Emilio Gargallo was a Spanish sculptor and painter.Born in Maella, Aragon, he moved to Barcelona, Catalonia, with his family in 1888, where he would begin his training in the arts. Gargallo developed a style of sculpture based on the creation of three-dimensional objects from pieces of flat...

, Pablo Serrano, Lucio Muñoz

Lucio Muñoz

Lucio Muñoz was a Spanish abstract painter and engraver.-Biography:Muñoz was the son of Lucio Muñoz, a shopkeeper, and Nicolasa Martínez. Born on December 27, 1929 in Madrid, he was the youngest of two brothers and three sisters...

, Luis Gordillo, Jorge Oteiza

Jorge Oteiza

Jorge Oteiza Enbil , was a Basque Spanish sculptor, painter, designer and writer, renowned for being one of the main theorists on Spanish modern art....

 and José Gutiérrez Solana.

International artists are few in the collection, but there are works by Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstract, reminiscent of Paul Klee...

, Yves Tanguy

Yves Tanguy

Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy , known as Yves Tanguy, was a French surrealist painter.-Biography:Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin...

, Man Ray

Man Ray

Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...

, Jacques Lipchitz

Jacques Lipchitz

Jacques Lipchitz was a Cubist sculptor.Jacques Lipchitz was born Chaim Jacob Lipchitz, son of a building contractor in Druskininkai, Lithuania, then within the Russian Empire...

, Lucio Fontana

Lucio Fontana

Lucio Fontana was an Italian painter, sculptor and theorist of Argentine birth. He was mostly known as the founder of Spatialism and his ties to Arte Povera.-Early life:...

, Yves Klein

Yves Klein

Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany...

, Max Ernst

Max Ernst

Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

, Richard Serra

Richard Serra

Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...

, Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....

, Donald Judd

Donald Judd

Donald Clarence Judd was an American artist associated with minimalism . In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy...

, Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst

Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...

, Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel

Julian Schnabel is an American artist and filmmaker. In the 1980s, Schnabel received international media attention for his "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates....

, Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...

, Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist....

, Wolf Vostell

Wolf Vostell

Wolf Vostell was a German painter, sculptor, noise music maker and Happening artist of the second half of the 20th century. Wolf Vostell is considered one of the pioneers of video art, environment-sculptures, Happenings and the Fluxus Movement...

, Gabriel Orozco

Gabriel Orozco

Gabriel Orozco is a Mexican artist, who in 1998 was called "one of the most influential artists of this decade, and probably the next one too." He was born in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico and educated in the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas between 1981 and 1984. He then continued his education...

, Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still was an American painter, and one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism.-Biography:...

, cubist still lifes by Georges Braque

Georges Braque

Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...

 and a large work by Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (painter)

Francis Bacon , was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, austere, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon's painterly but abstract figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds...

.

It also hosts a free-access library specializing in art, with a collection of over 100,000 books, over 3,500 sound recordings and almost 1,000 videos.

The central building of the museum was once a 18th century hospital

Hospital

A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....

. Extensive modern renovations and additions to the old building were made starting in 1980. In 1988, portions of the new museum were opened to the public, mostly in temporary configurations; that same year it was decreed by the Ministry of Culture as a national museum. Its architectural identity was radically changed in 1989 by Ian Ritchie

Ian Ritchie (architect)

Professor Ian Ritchie CBE is a British architect. He was born in 1947 in Sussex.After working with Norman Foster , Ritchie spent two years in France designing and constructing projects. In 1979 he founded Chrysalis Architects and also worked at Arup’s Lightweight Structures Group in London...

 with the addition of three glass circulation towers. An 8000 m² (86,000 ft²) expansion costing €92 million designed by French architect Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture...

 opened October 2005.

Popular culture references

The museum features, as a major protagonist, in Jim Jarmusch

Jim Jarmusch

James R. "Jim" Jarmusch is an American independent film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor and composer. Jarmusch has been a major proponent of independent cinema, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s.-Early life:...

's The Limits of Control

The Limits of Control

-Cultural references mentioned in the dialogue:* Suspicion by Alfred Hitchcock* Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky* The Lady from Shanghai by Orson Welles* La Vie de Bohème by Aki Kaurismäki* La vida no vale nada by Rogelio A...

(2009).

External links