Madrid - The heart of Spain

After spending two weeks in Sweden this spring, I flew from Stockholm to Madrid for my first visit to Spain. I stayed near the Plaza de España. I spent a week exploring the city on foot and by metro.

Madrid has a wealth of art galleries and museums. Many of the smaller museums are supported by savings banks, which have a legal obligation to invest their profits in initiatives that benefit society. I visited several museums and saw a wide range of excellent and well-curated exhibitions. The Fundación Mapfre has two museums in Madrid. At the Sala Azca, I saw moving portraits of the dispossessed by the photographer Fazal Sheikh. At the Paseo de Recoletos, I viewed the three-decade-long series of photographs of the Brown Sisters by Nicholas Nixon.

At the Fundación Juan March, I discovered the sensuality and natural touch of the 20th century Brazilian painter Tarsila do Amaral. At the exquisite new Caixa Forum, I reacquainted myself with the contemporary Iranian photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat, whose compelling works explore questions of culture and identity in our changing world. At the Fundación Telefónica, I viewed the less dramatic, more subtle side of the usually sensationalist 20th century New York photographer Weegee.

One morning, I walked through Chueca, the working-class district that's also a center of gay and lesbian life. I visited the Galería Edurne, run for over forty years by Margarita de Lucas and Antonio de Navascues. I also went to the Galería Elba Benítez, where South African photographer David Goldblatt was showing In the Time of Aids, an unsentimental look at complacency in the face of the Aids epidemic.

While I was in Madrid I had dinner with family friends. One of them is Daniel Canogar, a photographer who uses fiber-optic projections to look at the impact of digital technology on humans. At Daniel's suggestion, I visited La Fábrica Galería, where the photographer Muntadas juxtaposed public photographs of protest and repression with his own images of the same places several years later.

I also visited two of Spain's best-known museums, the Museo del Prado and the Museo Reina Sofía. At the Prado, I stood in quiet awe before Goya's masterpiece El Tres de Mayo, Western art's first truly anti-war painting. At the Reina Sofía, I interacted with Eulalia Valldosera's installation Dependencies. I also viewed Guernica, Pablo Picasso's incomparable 20th century rejection of war. Adjacent works by Robert Capa, Joan Miró and Alexander Calder helped me to understand the history and the repercussions of the Spanish Civil War.

The annual dance festival Madrid en Danza was on while I was in town. I went to the première of a Sin dios, an insightful and humorous look at contemporary relationships that was presented at the Teatros del Canal. Director/choreographer Carmen performed the piece with her troupe Provisional Danza.

By chance, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra was performing in Madrid while I was there. A friend who works for the MSO invited me to a performance at the Auditorio Nacional de Música. Kent Nagano led the orchestra in pieces by Bartók, Mendelssohn and Mahler. The violin soloist Viviane Hagner, tenor Klaus Florian Vogt and baritone Christian Gerhaher were all warmly received by the enthusiastic audience.