Barcelona to get new museum

The Museum of World Cultures will open in Barcelona in June 2014, just opposite the Picasso Museum.

The new museum will house art works from non-European cultures now in the Barcelona ethnological museum and also other works from private collections. The Folch collection of minerals, which was loaned to the city in 2011 for 20 years, will be housed there.

The Folch collection, which is considered one of the best private mineral collections in the world, is unique partly because of its style but also because it has never been divided, passing from father to son to grandson before being loaned to the city.

Joaquin Folch Girona, who was born in Barcelona in 1892 and died there in 1984, assembled his collection at a time when mineralogy was almost unknown in Spain. His first collection, largely of minerals from Spain itself, was confiscated during the Spanish civil war and never seen again. His second collection has 10,000 unique specimens, most of them small and selected for their beauty, which makes them unusual for a mineral collection.

The new museum will display art works from Asia and Oceania on the first floor and from Africa and the Americas on the second floor. It will cover an area of about 2,100 sqm and will cost approximately €5 million. It will be the first time that non-western art will be displayed in one place in Barcelona.