A museum dedicated to forbidden art

The jour­nal­ist and busi­ness­man Tatxo Benet (Lleida, 1957) began to dream of a mu­seum of cen­sored works of art about four years ago, just after mak­ing the ger­mi­nal ac­qui­si­tion of his col­lec­tion: the por­trait gallery Po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers in con­tem­po­rary Spain, by San­ti­ago Sierra, which sur­vived only a few hours at the Arco fair in Madrid. Those were the most tense mo­ments of the con­flict be­tween Cat­alo­nia and Spain and Benet, an in­de­pen­dence sup­porter, was very upset to see that “no one did any­thing” when this piece evap­o­rated from the event. Only one artist, the Cata­lan Pere Llobera, with­drew his works in protest. Benet, co-founder of the Me­di­apro au­dio­vi­sual group, also bought one.

A cou­ple of months later, he de­cided to piece to­gether a col­lec­tion ex­clu­sively ded­i­cated to works of art which had been at­tacked, ver­bally and/or phys­i­cally, in Spain, Cat­alo­nia, or any­where else on the planet. He needed a per­ma­nent venue for this, so he cre­ated the Mu­seum of Pro­hib­ited Art, which opened its doors last month at Casa Gar­riga Nogués on C/ Diputació, the ra­di­ant mod­ernist build­ing by ar­chi­tect Enric Sag­nier, which is re­turn­ing to its cul­tural use. From 2008 to 2015, it was the head­quar­ters of the Godia Foun­da­tion, be­fore hous­ing the Mapfre Foun­da­tion and then mov­ing to Barceloneta.

“As a mu­seum it is unique in the world,” says Rosa Ro­drigo, for­mer Di­rec­tor of Strate­gic De­vel­op­ment for Com­mer­cial and Pub­lic Busi­ness at the Reina Sofía Mu­seum. Benet’s col­lec­tion is home to more than 200 pieces, in­clud­ing works by Warhol, Pi­casso, Az­cona, Ser­rano, Klimt and Ai Wei­wei; of these, 42 have been se­lected for the first ex­hi­bi­tion, spread over 2,000 square me­tres.

Some of the most strik­ing pieces in­clude fif­teen copies of the first edi­tion of Goya’s Capritxos, one of the fiercest ever crit­i­cisms of hu­mankind, which the artist him­self re­moved from the mar­ket for fear of re­tal­i­a­tion from the Holy In­qui­si­tion (this is also the old­est piece in the ex­hi­bi­tion); Piss Christ, by Andrés Ser­rano, one of the most fa­mous con­tem­po­rary pho­tog­ra­phers in the world; The West­ern and Chris­t­ian Civil­i­sa­tion, by Léon Fer­rari; the in­stal­la­tion Si­lence, by Zoulikha Bouab­del­lah; and Suite 347, by Pablo Pi­casso.

Every­thing that has been the sub­ject of sup­pres­sion has hope­fully found a safe home in Tatxo Benet’s new mu­seum (which con­tin­ues to buy works: cen­sor­ship does not stop, nei­ther does he). The price of entry: 12 euros.

Fea­ture art