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Los secretos de los museos

Translation: Jon Alkorta MArtiartu, PhD (EHU/UPV)

Secrets of Museums

 To celebrate International Museum Day on 18 May, we dedicate this entry to discovering some of the secrets hidden in these institutions. And although we will mention some important art galleries, we will also visit museums that are interesting for their content and their mysteries.

The secret Thyssen

Matthäus Schwarz by Christoph Amberger, 1542.

One of my favourite museums in Madrid is the National Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza. And it is, above all, because it holds more than one secret behind its canvases. If we take a tour of its rooms we will find an astral chart and a horoscope, a Christ embracing a naked Magdalene or works by theosophical painters… Yes, I know that no guidebook will tell you this, but here is this audio of my section “Secret Madrid” in which I tell the story of these hidden mysteries of the Thyssen Museum.

The Museum of Mummies in Quinto

A mummy from Quinto. Picture: Belén Doblas.

In 2011, in the church of the town of Quinto (Aragón), hundreds of burials were discovered in the building from the time of its construction until 1831.

A total of 1,061 people are documented to have been buried in the floor of this emblematic building.

But the most curious thing is that, due to the climatic conditions and the humidity of the ground, many of these remains have been mummified. Thanks to the work of those involved, today we can visit this place and observe these mummified bodies in a natural way, a unique opportunity in our country.

Here is an interview by Belén Doblas with Mercedes González Fernández, researcher and President of the Institute of Scientific Studies on Mummies, in which she reveals all the secrets of the mummies of Quinto.

What to do in Valladolid

Three-faced piece in the Museum of African Art, Valladolid . Picture: Pedro Ortega.

If you are in Valladolid or its surroundings, be sure to visit the capital of the province. Here I recommend two places that you cannot miss.

The first is the Museum of African Art of the Arellano Alonso Foundation. Here there are pieces made to perform magic spells and, as we know, there have been reports of strange movements of the figures inside their urns, as they are pieces ” loaded” by their original owners with the intention of doing good or evil, in accordance with tribal traditions. Here are two links to find out more: the programme Mistérica Radio Secreta dedicated to this museum and an article by Cristina Bayo in the 8th issue of the magazine Herejía y Belleza.

And very close from here, a temporary exhibition was held at the National Sculpture Museum entitled “Strange Devotion. Of relics and reliquaries”, which, as its name suggests, was a display of countless objects with healing or miraculous powers for Christianity. After all, superstition and magic are not only typical of the African world.

Martin Bodmar Library and Museum

One of the illustrated books in Martin Bodmer Library. Picture: Pedro Ortega.

We leave Spain and head for Coligny, a small village on the outskirts of the city of Geneva, on Lake Geneva. This town is famous for the Villa Diodati, the mansion where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

But let’s move on to another landmark of this small town: the Martin Bodmer Library and Museum, declared a UNESCO Memory of the World in 2015.

The main collection is made up of about 200 Western and about 100 Eastern manuscripts, around 2,000 autograph documents and 270 incunabula (a tenth of which are very rare and unique). Then there are the rare printed works of which we have several thousand original editions dating from the 16th to the 20th century.

These masterpieces include several copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Corpus of Dante with three manuscripts of the Divine Comedy dating from the 14th century, manuscripts of works by Virgil and St. Thomas Aquinas, and the second part of Goethe’s Faust with 400 verses handwritten by the author.

For those of you who would like to consult the holdings of this library in digital format, there are two projects underway for their digitisation, which you can consult on the following web pages:

https://bodmerlab.unige.ch

https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en

Museum Secrets

The last recommendation is a pretty cool series that you can watch on the Amazon platform called Museum Secrets.

In each episode, the series focuses on a major city that stands out for its museums. Thus, we travel to Rome, Paris, London, Florence, Berlin, Athens, Istanbul or Mexico City, among others.

The truth is that some of the secrets that are revealed in the series are sometimes a little bit off the mark, but in general the information given is quite interesting.

The series has been running for three seasons and, finally, in the last one, they touch on issues related to Madrid.

Dr. Pedro Ortega

Ingeniero Industrial, Historiador del Arte, Máster en Edición Digital y Doctor en Estética. Es Gestor Cultural de Patrimonio Mundial del Ayuntamiento de Madrid. Edita la revista académica Herejía y Belleza y dirige el sello académico Ediciones Aulós. Es autor en Penguin Random House y ha escrito artículos para El Imparcial, Jot Down e Historia National Geographic, entre otros medios. Pedro Ortega PhD Industrial Engineer, Art Historian, with a M.A. in Digital Publishing and a PhD in Aesthetics. He is the cultural manager at the World Heritage Service of the Madrid City Council. He is a published author at Penguin Random House and has written articles for El Imparcial, Jot Down and Historia National Geographic, among others. Pedro Ortega doktorea Industria Ingeniaria, Artearen Historialaria, Edizio Digitaleko Master-duna eta Estetikan Doktorea. Kultur kudeatzailea da Madrilgo Udaleko Munduko Ondare Zerbitzuan. Penguin Random House-ko idazlea da eta artikuluak idatzi ditu El Imparcial, Jot Down eta Historia National Geographic-entzat, besteak beste.

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OpenEdition le sugiere que cite este post de la siguiente manera:
Dr. Pedro Ortega (3 de noviembre de 2023). Los secretos de los museos. El blog de Tartalo. Recuperado 19 de marzo de 2025 de https://doi.org/10.58079/unvz


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