Photo via: Museo Reina Sofía
Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía bought 26 artworks reaching a combined worth of €348,884 at ARCO art fair last week. The total budget spent marks an increase of €144, 259 compared to last year’s, when, according to El Imparcial, the acquisition committee of the museum acquired works for only €204,625 at the fair.
The increase in the museum’s budget crowns a successful edition of Spain’s top contemporary art fair (see ARCO’s 34th Edition Consolidates the Madrid Fair’s Position as a Top Destination for European and Latin American Art and See The 7 Best Booths at ARCOMadrid). This, in turn, points at a slow but steady, if much-awaited recovery in the Spanish art market, badly hit by the financial crises since 2008 (see Spanish Art Market Can’t Shake the Recession).
Museo Reina Sofia has released a list of the acquired works, which includes: The Expression of Hands (1997) by Harun Farocki, Dóra Maurer’s Timing (1973-1980), Mladen Stilinovic’s photo series Artist at Work (1978), a painting by Miriam Cahn for €22,400, the video Preparaçao II (1976) by the Brazilian artist Leticia Parente, and the installation Untitled (2014) by the young Spanish artist Julia Spínola.
The museum hasn’t provided a breakdown of the prices of the works or named the galleries they were purchased from, but has remarked that the majority of the acquisitions came from Spanish art dealers.