MADRID, CITY OF THE ARTS

    Home to one of the foremost collections of 20th and 21st century art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía's dramatic $110 million expansion to a whopping 904,000 square feet, makes it one of the world's largest contemporary art museums. On a triangular space adjoining the original museum, the city's 1788 hospital, includes three new buildings housing two large galleries, a library and an auditorium. A massive blade-like roof juts out over the street covering the new steel and glass structures and the 18th century building. Large-format art works are now be exhibited in two massive rooms dedicated to temporary exhibitions. A 500-seat auditorium, 250,000-book volume library and bookshop specializing in art from the 20th and 21st centuries round out the offerings.

    More space is one thing, but how’s this line-up for star-power art work filling up that space: Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Julio González, Pablo Picasso, Miguel Barceló, Eduardo Chillida, Benjamín Palencia, Gerardo Rueda, Alberto Sánchez, Antonio Saura, Antoni Tàpies, Jean Arp, Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Vassily Kandinsky, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger and Jacques Lipchitz. In the last 10 years, the number of visitors to the Reina Sofía doubled to 1.5 million. You can anticipate another patronage doubling in the near future.

    Other Madrid museums routinely mount major retrospectives of the work of Spain's most important artists, including Pablo Picasso. Museo Nacional del Prado has featured a major Picasso retrospectives in connection with the Cleveland Museum of Art and New York's Museum of Modern Art and Barcelona's Museo Picasso. The Prado is also Madrid’s leader in European Classic art.

    Opened in 1992, Thyssen-Bonemisza Museum complements the Prado’s collection of old paintings and the modern art housed at the Reina Sofía Museum, by featuring movements and styles such as the Italian and Dutch primitives, German Renaissance art, 17th century Dutch painting, Impressionism, German Expressionism, Russian Constructivism, Geometric Abstraction and Pop Art. Without a doubt, it is one of the most important private art collections of the 20th century.

    With the recently expanded Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Museo Nacional del Prado, Thyssen-Bonemisza Museum and dozens of other smaller museums and gallerries, Madrid has emerged from the shadow of Paris and London as a world-class art destination.