The IVAM proposes to turn the expansion plot into a sculpture garden open to the neighbourhood

The IVAM’s management held a meeting this afternoon with different associations and collectives from the “barrio del Carmen” in order to communicate to them the project for the expansion plot. This proposal involves providing this space with a museum purpose by installing a sculpture garden. The museum has also communicated its intention to open the street that separates the museum’s building from the building of the Beneficència in order to join the “barrio del Carmen” with the “ronda interior”, which is one of the historic requests of the neighbours.

While waiting for a possible expansion, the museum believes that this 2,800 square metre plot, at the back of the museum, cannot stay in the condition it is in for any longer. Because of this, the museum has shown its intention to recondition the plot and to place in it about ten sculptures from the IVAM’s collection, by artists such as Markus Lüpertz, Tony Smith, Pablo Palazuelo, or the Valencian artists Miquel Navarro, Andreu Alfaro, or Vicente Ortí, among others.

Thus, they expect this space, in which benches and flowerpots with trees and plants would also be installed, to become a space for coexistence for the neighbours and to be open to the neighbourhood. In the words of the director of the IVAM, José Miguel Cortés, a place where life is in contact with art. Their intention is for it to be also useful as an open area of the museum where educational activities about modern and contemporary art for kids can be carried out.

Representatives of Amics del Carme, Breakfast with pedestrians, Solar Corona, Intramurs, AJAVA, EASD, UV, UPV, Col·lectiu Mares i Pares de Ciutat Vella, the Parents’ associations from the Cervantes and the Santa Teresa schools, Barri del Carme High School, Falla Mossen Sorell-Corona, Falla Ripalda-Beneficencia-San Ramón and Associació d’Estudis Fallers have taken part in this meeting.

Finding a suitable solution for this plot is a matter on which the management of the IVAM has been working for months. Since November, they have gathered several times with representatives of different social and neighbourhood associations, universities, education centres and cultural activism movements in order to exchange opinions and ideas. In addition, a symbolic opening act of the plot was organised in February with the collective “Breakfast with pedestrians”, which more than 600 people attended. The aim of all this is to get a museum that is open to the citizens and which has a close relationship with the neighbourhood.