Please Touch Everything!

Museum of Typhlology / Museo Tiflológico
06/28/12 – Calle la Coruña, 18

The Museum of Typhlology calls itself “a museum to see and touch,” making it a perfect destination for families with small children. Typhlology refers to the scientific study of blindness.  But rather than science, this museum seduces through art and architecture. I brought a newly-minted teenager, somewhat against his will.  I can say that he did not complain during the visit, and even let himself be photographed. 

Museum of Typhlology

The lady at reception actually smiled and emerged from her desk to describe the museum to us (in Spanish), a welcome quite different from most art museums.  Our favorite section contained sturdy, detailed models of famous cities, monuments and structures.  From the Eiffel Tower to the aqueduct of Segovia, all were available to explore with eyes and hands.  On a random Thursday, there were two blind visitors—an older gentleman and his guide dog, and an adolescent girl with her family—and about two dozen sighted people in the museum. 

Models included the city of Jerusalem, the Taj Mahal, the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, and the Alhambra.  Many of Spain’s most interesting buildings can be found here: El Escorial, the Royal Palace, the Mezquita of Toledo, and Gaudi’s famous Cathedral in Barcelona, to name a few.    

The Alhambra in Granada, Spain

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

The  Royal Palace, Madrid

To my disappointment, Madrid’s Museum of Archaeology has been closed all year for renovations.  So I was excited to find in the Museum of Typhlology a full-scale reproduction of the stunning “Lady of Elche,” an Iberian funerary bust believed to date from the fourth or fifth century BCE.  

Dama de Elche.  Found near Alicante, Spain in 1897.

"Autumn" (1989) by blind artist Rosa Garriga

After pondering a collection of photos, sculptures, and paintings created by blind or visually impaired artists, we descended a staircase to the lower level of the museum.

There one can learn about the development of the Braille reading system, and machines that were invented to make life easier for the visually impaired: special typewriters, calculators, drawing boards, puzzles and voice recorders.

Machine for typing Braille as well as musical notation

The Museum of Typhlology is perhaps the only place in the world that hangs a frieze from the Parthenon at eye-level, and then invites you closer.

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Hours: Tues –Fri, 10 am– 2 pm, & 5 pm – 8; Sat. 10-2.  Address: Calle la Coruña, 18. Metro: Estrecho.  Located on the third floor of the ONCE building.  ONCE is a non-profit corporation devoted to improving the quality of life of blind and visually-impaired persons in Spain. 

School's Out, and a New Museum Opens

Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions / Museo de Artes y Tradiciones Populares
06/21/12 – Calle Carlos Arniches 3-5

As June winds down, only a month remains of our year in Spain. S1 and S2 finished Madrid public school this week.  S2, in seventh grade, took part in an English bilingual program—the result of a new campaign to encourage English at a time when many young Spaniards will have to seek jobs abroad.  The school’s American teaching assistant, a recent college grad from Maryland, introduced his charges to lacrosse.  He brought all the equipment to Madrid.  Though lacrosse is a Native American sport, my son had never seen it.  On the last day of school, rival classes faced off in an epic match.

On the other hand, after only one month of language study, S1 plunged into tenth grade last fall: an all-Spanish curriculum of math, Latin, music, history, literature, computers, ethics, gym, and classical culture.  For two weeks he didn’t say a word, and teachers just thought he was slow—no one told them about the foreigner in their midst.  Now at year’s end S1 has passed his classes, and is fluent in Spanish. On a recent medical visit, I strained to understand the doctor while my son chatted away.  Later, he coolly informed me that the doctor's accent marked him as a northerner, from Basque territory.

My kids will tell you school is different here.  Some stories they bring home have raised my eyebrows.  A sampling:

A child received a "Fail" on a color-contrast exam, even though the teacher knew he was color blind.

Gym students were graded on whether or not they won. (Victors in a badminton match received 10 points, the losers: 0).

A boy was harshly admonished and sent to the principal’s office for the offense of involuntary flatulence.

Teachers told vulgar jokes.

During a biology lesson in English on the dung beetle, the struggling teacher used the word “shit” over and over, for lack of a more scientific term. 

They will never forget their year in Spanish public school.  We also saved sixty thousand dollars, the cost of educating two children for one year at the private American School of Madrid, not even including materials, lunch or transportation (I think I hear you gasp).

Meanwhile . . . a new museum quietly opened this month in El Rastro, Madrid’s old market neighborhood.  The free Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions occupies a true nineteenth-century corrala, typical housing for the masses in centuries past. The first corralas were built in the sixteenth century.

Museum blends into the surroundings on Calle Carlos Aniches, 3-5

Museum patio: the renovated 19th c. "corrala"

Footnote: La Quinta motel, USA, 1973

A corrala is characterized by several floors of open galleries surrounding a common patio. The ground floor would house workshops and stores, with dwellings above. I’m tempted to reference a two-story La Quinta motel from the 1970s, without the parking.  What the heck: for all I know, motel architecture owes everything to the corrala.

The museum draws on a collection of folk art, both rural and urban, of the Autonomous University of Madrid. Currently, an exhibit of the yearly festival cycle has been mounted: “El Ciclo Festivo del Año.”   

Carnival costumes from various regions of Spain

Metalwork

Giant papier mache heads, paraded during the celebration of Corpus Christi

Afterwards, a stroll through the hilly streets of El Rastro will lead you past dozens of vintage furniture and antique stores, as well as photographs, waiting to be shot and framed.   

Across the street: impromptu exhibit

The Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions is open Mon. - Fri. 10-2 & 5-8; Sat. 10-2.

Baroque and Beautiful

Museum of the History of Madrid / Museo de Historia de Madrid
06/12/12 – Calle de Fuencarral, 78

When the current renovation is finished, the Museum of History--originally the eighteenth-century Royal Hospice of San Fernando--will cover four centuries of life in Madrid. Until then, we can still enjoy the most head-swiveling doorway in the city.

Pedro de Ribera's Baroque doorway (1726): Alms-house extraordinaire.

A guard told me that part of the permanent collection re-opens at the end of 2012, but the museum won't be fully operational until 2013.  In the meantime it will continue to host temporary, free exhibits on the ground floor. The National Library of Spain has organized Otras Miradas (Other Views, until July 8), with maps of old Madrid, oil paintings, and 3-D topographic models. 

3-D model of Madrid by Leon Gil de Palacio (1830)

The permanent collection will re-open in phases, starting in late 2012

It boggles the mind that this building faced destruction in 1922.  We can thank the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Spanish Society of Art-Lovers for intervening.  Muchas gracias.

Shopping, Then Stopping: What to See in the Skyscraper

Espacio Fundación Telefónica : History of Telecommunications Museum
06/05/12 - Fuencarral 3

Fan with case, from Salvador Bachiller, 9 euros

I love the way Spanish ladies still use fans to whip up a breeze.  A few weeks ago, my seventh-grader performed in his school play to an audience packed with parents.  As he looked out at the crowd, he noticed that every mother in the room was using a fan, and all the fans waved in unison.  (The play was ambitious for a public school whose only outside activities are chess and boys’ basketball: an adaptation of a novel by Torcuato Luca de Tena, set in a mental institution.  Think King of Hearts meets Nancy Drew, with mod lighting and video clips. My son, the only foreigner, was given a walk-on role as one of the inmates).  I've started to carry a fan wherever I go.  In fact, I’m using one now to deflect the heat rising from my laptop.  Cute and utilitarian—it is the perfect souvenir.  

Telefonica Building

Trendy stores with names like Skunkfunk and Desigual attract all sorts to the shopping street of Fuencarral. I’ve seen the gamut: pierced, tottering, and cutting-edge; school groups in matching t-shirts; transvestites; a ballerina in street-clothes; and yesterday, a French bulldog in a ruffled skirt. After a spell of window- and people-gazing, you might dash into the stunning new cultural space that opened this year in the building that calls itself “Europe’s First Skyscraper.”    

When it was finished in 1929, the American-inspired art deco Telefónica Building was the tallest in Madrid.  It recently added three new (free) exhibit spaces and a gift store, with an entrance on Fuencarral Street number 3.  A sculptural staircase and a glass elevator set the tone for the renovation. 

Lobby and staircase, Fuencarral entrance

On one of the levels, you’ll find a museum of sorts: an exhibit called The History of Telecommunications.  It traces the evolution of remote communication since the nineteenth century.  

1920s linesman bicycle

1925 telephone used by King Alfonso XIII to inaugurate new service in Madrid (1926)  and to place the first transatlantic call (1928)

For art lovers, the top level displays the Telefónica Cubist Collection, which revolves around the work of Madrid-born painter Juan Gris (1887-1927).  I couldn’t help peering at the rooftop patio next door.  The views of Gran Via are pretty good as well.

Terraza envy

Gran Via, viewed from fourth level of Telefonica

The middle level currently houses a most intriguing exhibit called “Art and Artificial Life 1999-2012.”  

Philip Beesley, Rob Gorbet (2007, Canada). These "plants" have sensors to detect your presence and move their tendrils.

Robotic blob by Paula Gaetano Adi (2006, Argentina). It sweats when you touch it.

"Head." Ken Feingold (1999, USA)

I found myself all alone in the dark with this lifelike “Head” by American artist Ken Feingold, when it started to talk.  Its eyes blinked and its mouth moved, and it spoke to me in English. “When did you get here?” the Head asked.  I muttered something in response.  

Head continued. “I don’t care about you in the least. Ask me a question.”

I asked about the Wisconsin Governor recall election taking place in my home state today.

“Sorry,” Head said.  “I only understand when I am in another mood.” Silence. Head abhorred a vacuum.  He added, “I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll make an exception.”

The notes said this art work will raise doubts about the coherence of our dialogue with others. And it does.


Hours: Tues - Sun 10:00 - 20:00 (closed M)

Free View from the Top: Palace of Cibeles

5/30/12 - Plaza de Cibeles, 1

The Palace of Cibeles (1919) must be one of the most conspicuous buildings in Madrid.  A striking, white confection, it looms over the Fountain of Cibeles (1794) and dominates the Plaza. Since the 1970s, the city's biggest celebrations have taken place in front of the Palace, including the victories of the Real Madrid football team. 

Observation deck is located on the central tower (8th floor).
Enter building through main (arched) doorway.

During the twentieth century, the building was called the Palace of Communications, and served as the main office of the postal, telegraph and telephone services. Impressive mail chutes for all Spain's provinces still line the side of the building that faces Paseo del Prado.

Today, the Palace of Cibeles is both the seat of Madrid's government and a newly-minted cultural space.  In the past decade it underwent extensive restoration.

Photo exhibit on the restoration process, 2008-2011

As I discovered this morning, the main (second) floor is now completely open to the public--walk right in and place your bag in the x-ray machine. Take a look around, visit the cafe, use the restrooms, or fire up your laptop in the wifi zone.  There is also a restaurant and a terrace bar on the 6th floor.

Taking a breather in the public lounge/ wifi zone, Palace of Cibeles

Terrace bar, viewed from the observation deck.

The observation deck or "mirador" has been open since 2011: hours 10:30-1:00 & 4:30-7:30 (closed Mondays and holidays).  Visitors must ask for a ticket at the coat-check counter on the second floor and then ascend to the 6th floor at the appointed time.  I arrived at 11:20 and received a ticket for 11:30.

Most people opt to ascend the final 88 steps on foot--there are more views along the way--but an elevator is provided for those who need one.

Splendid 360-degree view from the 8th floor deck

On the way back down, you can explore the interior . . .

Original tiled marble staircase

Glass block floors

View of main floor 

. . . before continuing on your way. The Naval Musuem is right next door, and the Prado Museum just a few blocks further.  Outside, dozens of chirping school children, dressed in summer hues, strolled down the shady avenue.

Paseo del Prado, in the merry merry month of May

Legends of Fish Street

me llaman puta, también princesa
me llaman calle, es mi nobleza
me llaman calle, calle sufrida,
calle perdida de tanto amar

--Manu Chao, “Me llaman calle”

05/20/12 - Calle del Pez
A fish story, with lots of photos

Early last fall, at the beginning of our stay in Madrid, the Professor and I stumbled around the barrio of Malasaña until at last we found a street sign for Calle del Pez (Street of the Fish, pronounced "Peth"). We met up with friends in the tapas bar El Pez Gordo, or The Fat Fish.  By midnight, the place was busting at the seams, and the evening was barely getting started.

For a very short street--400 meters--Calle del Pez is long on legends.  Over the course of the year, I learned about several of them: the quaint origin of the street’s name; a sordid tale of cloistered nuns, demonic possession and the intervention of the Spanish Inquisition; King Felipe IV’s passion for a beautiful young nun from the same convent—and the Velazquez masterpiece he commissioned to atone for his sin.  

Calle del Pez also contains a surviving example of a sixteenth-century Casa a la malicia (spite house), and appears in Pío Baroja’s 1911 novel The Tree of Knowledge (El arbol de la ciencia), as well as the acclaimed 1997 film Open Your Eyes (Abre los ojos). The singer Manu Chao immortalized street-walkers on Calle del Pez in a 2007 music video filmed in a local bar, the Palentino.

I can’t get enough of this street. 

Riffs on fish are everywhere...

A bar on Calle del Pez

The Lucky Fish, State Lottery No. 361

Hostal of the Blue Fish

Darwin store sign

I *think* this means "The Fishbowl" (twee accessories shop)

Sea creatures

Entry way detail

Sixteenth-Century Spite House

Start at the corner of Calle San Bernardo (near metro Noviciado) and walk east on Calle del Pez.  On your left, a university student carries books to class in perpetuity. I call her the sultry scholar (the best kind, and not an oxymoron). 

The sultry scholar of Calle del Pez

After paying your respects, look across the street at number 31, a store selling religious figurines.  This small building is one of Madrid’s 1,000 known Casas a la malicia, houses modified in the late sixteenth century to hide extra living space beneath their rafters.

The sloping roof at number 31 purportedly conceals extra rooms.

When King Felipe II moved the court from Toledo to Madrid in 1561, accommodations for the influx of new arrivals were scarce.  Until more residences could be built, landlords were required to offer up any space above the first floor (second floor in U.S. parlance), or suffer fines.  To deter unwelcome strangers, owners resorted to all kinds of trickery to fool the eye.  You can find more photos of spite houses in this blog entry from Pasión por Madrid.   The Museum of the City (Museo de la Ciudad) also has scale models of Casas a la Malicia.

The Name

Before the seventeenth century, this thoroughfare was called Street of the Cleric’s Fount (Calle de la Fuente del Cura). The area contained springs and ponds filled with colorful fish.  When the property passed into the hands of D. Juan Coronel, his daughter Blanca was delighted by the fish.  But subsequent construction on the property caused the fish to die.  When only one fish remained, Blanca placed it in a bowl.  It died as well, and Blanca was bereft.  In its memory, Coronel had a fish carved into the façade of their house.  The original house is long gone, but the fish remains, and can be spied on the building at the corner of Calle del Pez and Calle Jesús de Valle.  

Look carefully or you will miss it.

Blanca eventually joined the nearby order of Benedictine nuns, which brings me to the next saga…

Strange Doings at the Convent of San Plácido

Scandal the First. I’ve come across several accounts of this case, none annotated and each more lurid than the last.  My recap tries to steer a middle ground, if such a thing exists. The convent was founded in the year 1623 at Calle San Roque 9, adjacent to Calle del Pez.  

If walls could talk. Convent of San Placido, seen from Pez.

A few years later, not long after the arrival of a new confessor named Juan Francisco García Calderón, one of the nuns began to exhibit unusually violent states of rapture.  One by one, all but four of the 30 nuns succumbed to fits of extreme behavior.  Calderón declared them to be possessed, and embarked on an ambitious regime of exorcisms to rid their bodies of demons.  Suspicions arose when folks pointed out that the only nuns immune to Lucifer were old and unattractive.  The Holy Office caught wind, and ordered the entire group to Toledo, where they were placed for two years in the prison of the Inquisition.  Eventually, the nuns were recognized as the victims of an unbalanced confessor.  (Was fish-lover Blanca among them?)  They scattered to different convents, their prioress returned to San Plácido, and Calderón remained imprisoned.  

Convent at left, view down Calle San Roque.

Scandal the Second. Not long after this incident, King Phillip IV of Spain heard the news that a surpassingly beautiful young woman had just taken vows in the Convent of San Placido.  With the help of his friend Don Jerónimo, the neighbor and patron founder of the convent, the King built a secret passage through a coal cellar, and finagled a series of assignations with Sister Margarita.  The prioress of the convent, unable to stop the courtship due to the complicity of Jerónimo, took matters into her own hands: Margarita was decked out in black, staged as a corpse in a coffin with burning candles and crucifix, and presented as dead.  When the men arrived that night, they were shocked by the vision, and high-tailed it back to the house next door.

The King met with his confessor, and soon after presented the convent with a splendid clock that tolled the hours.  He also instructed his court painter Velázquez to paint the famous canvas known as “Cristo de Velázquez” (c. 1632).  The painting belonged to the convent for several hundred years, until it was given to the Prado, where it still hangs today.  The clock disappeared in 1903 during renovation of the building. 

Calle del Pez Today

In Pío Baroja’s novel about the provincialism of Spain, The Tree of Knowledge (1911), the enterprising but ill-fated Lulu opens her own sewing shop on Calle del Pez.  She’s a proto-feminist who enchants the cynical protagonist Andrés Hurtado (alas, also ill-fated).  Today, the neighborhood of Malasaña is undergoing a kind of funky gentrification after years of gritty neglect.  The stores along Calle del Pez illustrate this change.  Where prostitutes and junkies once roamed, we now see trendy dress shops and tapas bars…and a pair of ruby slippers, worn by Lulu in her dreams.    

There's no place like Calle del Pez.