Queen Sofía Museum

   The Queen Sofía Art Centre (Centre de Arte Reina Sofía—CARS), Madrid, houses a permanent collection of modern art from 1881, and is the successor to the former Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo.

   Situated near the Prado Museum and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in a refurbished eighteenth-century hospital building, it opened for the display of temporary exhibitions of modern art in 1986, though work continued on a second phase until 1990, when an official re-opening was celebrated with an exhibition of twentieth-century Italian art. The organization of its permanent collection continued well into 1992, and in that year, amid much controversy, Picas-so's famous Guernica was moved to the Centre from the Casón del Buen Retiro, an annexe of the Prado Museum. The permanent collection has been increased by purchase, including some international works, and by the transfer from the Prado Museum of some fifty pieces after the rationalization of the holdings of the two museums in 1995. Organized chronologically by artist and/or styles, it includes works by Miró, Dalí and Picasso and, since 1996, the Buñuel legacy, comprising books, objects, photographs (among them the celebrated one by Man Ray), correspondence and scripts.

   See also: art collections; art exhibitions; arts funding; arts policy; museums

   EAMONN RODGERS