Sitges Museums present at the 23rd Conference on Catalan Modernism in Potsdam

The Head of Collections and Exhibitions of the Sitges Museums, Ignasi Domènech, one of the speakers at the 23rd Conference on Catalan Modernism at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam
Monday 1 December 2025

This coming Wednesday, December 3, the Museum Barberini in the German city of Potsdam will host the 23rd Symposium Barcelona Moderna: From Gaudí to Picasso, an academic conference that brings together international experts to anticipate the homonymous exhibition planned for 2026-2027 in Munich and Potsdam.

One of the highlights will be the intervention of Ignasi Domènech Vives, Head of Collections and Exhibitions of the Sitges Museums, who will present the conference From the collection to the myth. The Cau Ferrat as a laboratory of modernism, at 2 p.m. Domènech will delve into the essential role of the Cau Ferrat as a creative nucleus of Modernism, both in the museum and in the symbolic and cultural spheres.

The rest of the conference will include presentations on key topics such as:

● Barcelona 1900: Staging Modernism, by Dr. Nerina Santorius (Museum Barberini), curator of the exhibition, which will situate the social and artistic context of the city at the turn of the century.

● Between Catalonia, Spain, and Europe: Cultural Interrelationships of Modernism, by fellow curators Carlos Alonso Pérez-Fajardo (Madrid) and Dr. Franziska Stöhr (Kunsthalle München), who will explore the international links of the movement.

● The (Abandoned) Gardens of Spain. On the Poetics of the Vegetal in the Literature and Paintings of Santiago Rusiñol, i.e., the study of the vegetal representation in the literary and pictorial work of Santiago Rusiñol, by Professor Jenny Haase-Knöpfle of the University of Potsdam.

● The exploration of the relationship between Joaquim Mir and the Mallorcan landscape with Joaquim Mir y Mallorca. En busca del paisaje moderno, by Nadia Hernández Henche (Barcelona).

● Finally, historian Megan Fontanella, from the Guggenheim Museum in New York, will analyze Pablo Picasso's youth between Barcelona and Paris, in her conference Make Way for the Young. Pablo Picasso between Barcelona and Paris.

This symposium consolidates the Sitges Museums as an international reference in the study and dissemination of Modernism, and reinforces the projection of key figures and spaces such as Cau Ferrat in the European cultural narrative.