The 6 Best Art Museums in Leon, Castile and Leon

The Museum is sponsored by the Fundación Obra Social de Castilla y León. It explores the building's history and Antonio Gaudí himself, and houses 19th and 20th century paintings and works of art by Ramón Casas i Carbó, Raimundo de Madrazo, Joaquín Sorolla, José Gutiérrez Solana, José Navarro Llorens, Ignacio Pinazo, Nicanor Piñole and Joaquín Mir Trixet, among others. Gaudí's own particular brand of magic shines through in the details: the Catalan vaults, the cast-iron pillars, the stained glass windows on the first floor, the light in the interior patios, the wood and steel staircases and the attic space which affords access to the original turret from 1893, among other features. Casa Botines, whose corner turrets lend it an air of a fairy tale castle, is one of the most compelling pieces of nineteenth-century architecture in Spain. The Gaudí who created Casa Botines was a true architect; an artist with the skill to seamlessly blend technique and aesthetics.

MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León stands as an essential tool for creating a collective sense surrounding contemporary art and culture. MUSAC is defined as an open space for citizens for thought, dialogue and understanding of analytical tools and action strategies concerning art and its relation with society within the period in which the museum program and its collection focus. The chronological axis, that embraces the early 80s to the present, takes the year 1989 as its conceptual starting point, in which the fall of the Berlin Wall, European restructuring and the end of international politics characterized by the confrontation between blocks, mark the start of a global landscape in which we currently live. MUSAC Collection, cornerstone of the museum, comprises more than 1650 works by nearly 400 regional, national and international artists. A task of study, research and conservation revolves around it, with the mission to preserve for the future and disseminate an artistic heritage surrounding different conceptual paths that are representative of the relationships of art with the social, political, cultural and aesthetic moments and situations from which they surge. The exhibition program underlines this relationship between the importance of contemporary production and the revision and contextualization of subjects, movements and artists in a wide historic, political and social framework. It responds, as well, to the central-peripheral dynamics, favoring the dialogue between the local and the global, developing and supporting the creation, exhibition, dissemination and research of art in Castilla y León. The educational and cultural program complete the social vocation of the museum, acting as tools for the active inclusion of diverse publics through dialogue, sharing and the production of meaning from the possibilities that art and culture grant to all citizens as a public space for self-representation. It also aspires to create a platform for thought and a network of collaborative relations generated by the seminars, publications, workshops or open calls surrounding work processes, exhibition programs, the collection or collaborative projects with the public. MUSAC is ultimately a space which citizens can inhabit as a place for encounter and a forum for study, research, discussion, analysis and enjoyment of contemporary art and culture.