This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
World Design Spotlight: IVAM
In 1989 the news focused on the fall of the Berlin Wall, the tanks of Tiananmen Square and the AIDS crisis. That same year saw the opening in Valencia of the IVAM, one of the most important cultural projects of recent decades and the first museum to be opened with a sound artistic project after the emergence of democracy in Spain, thanks to a clear political will and the support of society.
The Valencian Institute of Modern Art (Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, or IVAM) was the first project for the creation of a modern and contemporary museum developed in Spain, encouraged by the policy of self-governing regions and the need to recognize and promote more recent art. It was officially created in 1986 and became a reality in 1989, after years of work on its construction and conception.
The Institut Valencià d’Art Modern was installed in a new building raised by Valencian architects Emilio Giménez and Carlos Salvadores at one end of the historic centre of the city, opposite the former watercourse of the river Turia.
The museum for the most modern art took its first steps in the oldest neighbourhood of Valencia, El Carmen, under the artistic vision of Tomás Llorens. Llorens had, until then, been, director of the Reina Sofía Art Centre (MNCARS) and, after the IVAM, would for many years be head curator of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
He was accompanied on the adventure of raising a museum conceptually from scratch by a young Vicent Todolí, curator and artistic manager who, after his brilliant career at the IVAM, would manage the Serralves Museum of Oporto and, later, the Tate Modern in London.
The historic day of the inauguration of the IVAM, now with Carmen Alborch as director, Queen Sofía and all the members of the institutional delegation were able to view works by Saura, Tàpies and Chillida; the hall dedicated to the poster artist José Renau, pioneer of the Valencian artistic vanguard of the thirties, and the anthological display of the Equipo Crónica (Chronical Team). The official inauguration also covered the permanent exhibition of the impressionist painter Ignacio Pinazo, whose collection had been purchased by the IVAM.
At the end of that year, 1989, after long queues to enter the museum, visitors to the IVAM would find an exhibition of works by Joaquín Sorolla which would set a standard in terms of visitor numbers and would attempt, in turn, to break with the more clichéd view of the artist.
The Institut Valencià d’Art Modern was installed in a new building raised by Valencian architects Emilio Giménez and Carlos Salvadores at one end of the historic centre of the city, opposite the former watercourse of the river Turia. A space that today boasts an area of 18,200 square metres.
As for the architectural interventions, the building was extended in the year 2000 by the architects Emilio Giménez and Julián Esteban Chapapría. Later, an attempted renovation was projected by the SANAA team, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, Pritzker Prize in 2010, in which the building would be enveloped by a perforated metal prism. In the end, this architectural renovation was not undertaken.
What did take place, in 2018, was the opening of a branch of the museum in the city of Alcoy, IVAM CADA, and the opening is planned in 2023 of another premises in Parc Central de Valencia, in one of the industrial warehouses designed by the architect Demetrio Ribes, now refurbished, which will host the more experimental and avant-garde part of the programme of the IVAM. Ribes was the architect of the Estación del Norte and one of the renovators of the city at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), directed since 2020 by Nuria Enguita, is situated on the podium of the most important cultural institutions of the Valencian Community, according to data of the latest Cultural Observatory.
Photography: IVAM and Turismo Valencia.
The museum, which placed the city on the international art map, contains eight galleries intended for permanent and temporary exhibitions. One of these, the Sala de la Muralla, has independent access and shows the foundations of the old mediaeval city walls of Valencia, built in the second half of the fourteenth century.
As for the architectural interventions, the building was extended in the year 2000 by the architects Emilio Giménez and Julián Esteban Chapapría. Later, an attempted renovation was projected by the SANAA team, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, Pritzker Prize in 2010, in which the building would be enveloped by a perforated metal prism. In the end, this architectural renovation was not undertaken.
What did take place, in 2018, was the opening of a branch of the museum in the city of Alcoy, IVAM CADA, and the opening is planned in 2023 of another premises in Parc Central de Valencia, in one of the industrial warehouses designed by the architect Demetrio Ribes, now refurbished, which will host the more experimental and avant-garde part of the programme of the IVAM. Ribes was the architect of the Estación del Norte and one of the renovators of the city at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), directed since 2020 by Nuria Enguita, is situated on the podium of the most important cultural institutions of the Valencian Community, according to data of the latest Cultural Observatory.
Photography: IVAM and Turismo Valencia.
