On the occasion of the second anniversary of UPF Art Track and coinciding with International Museum Day, 18 May 2018, this tour of the artistic heritage of Pompeu Fabra University reinforces its international dissemination with the project “Universitat Pompeu Fabra. UPF Art Track” and join Google Arts & Culture. Thus, UPF has become one of the cultural and artistic institutions chosen by Google.

Google Arts & Culture is a digital platform that offers a collection of high resolution images of works from art exhibited in the most prestigious museums in the world, as well as a virtual tour of their galleries. It includes institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the George Pompidou Museum in Paris, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Biennale of Venice, and the Reina Sofia in Madrid.

Since its foundation in May 2016, in the framework of the 25^th anniversary of the University, UPF Art Track has been a member of the Barcelona Contemporary Art Circuit, to which other prestigious cultural institutions in the city also belong, such as the Miró Foundation, the Tàpies Foundation, the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA). Now, after two years, UPF Art Track is taking a new step forward in the international arena and is joining Google Arts & Project.

Two exhibitions to show the artistic heritage of the University in all its glory

“Google has offered a generous digital space to the University to present UPF Art Track and invite any art lover to get to know and to enjoy it”, says Javier Aparicio Maydeu, professor of Literature at the Department of Humanities, UPF’s culture delegate and promoter of the artistic circuit located on the Ciutadella campus. To kick off we find a header image, a red mark located on the back of a painting by Antoni Tàpies, exhibited in the Tàpies Space, which leads on to the contents.

The first exhibition, entitled “UPF Art Track”, by way of introduction, is a fixed annotated collection of between 25 and 30 items, including images and videos. A detail of the frieze by Susana Solano stands out, located on the wall of the Dipòsit de les Aigües (water tower), which reproduces a phrase from the great philosopher Eugenio Trías; and videos of the inside and the outside of this spectacular building recorded by drones, of the inauguration of UPF Art Track with the presence of the director of the Prado Museum, Miguel Zugaza or Antoni Tàpies while he created the famous Reflection Room. The virtual visitor dialogues with images of paintings by various artists such as Perejaume, Miquel Barceló, Lita Cabellut and Jaume Plensa.

“This first exhibition aims to show who we are and what we have. It does not seek to replace an actual visit to UPF Art Track, rather an insinuation, so that those interested will come in person to enjoy the tour of the artistic heritage of the University. The spaces are taken in a suggestive manner, we didn’t even want to keep the order of the various elements”, says Javier Aparicio Maydeu.

As for the second exhibition, “Les arts es confabulen”, it is a temporary changing collection, presenting contents that will vary over time. It is designed to be a transversal display, a combination of artistic genres through painting (Roy Lichtenstein, Alexandre Hollan), sculpture (Alfonso Alzamora), installations (Susana Solano) or architectural heritage, with images taken by drones of the current campus buildings, all of them designed by major international architects, combined with historical images.

“Through its presence in Google Arts & Culture, UPF again makes it clear that despite being a young public university, little more than 26 years old, it has managed to bring together top level artistic heritage”, concludes Javier Aparicio Maydeu.