Opened in 1946 in the old pavilion of Beautiful Arts of the Latin American Exhibition of 1929, a spectacular neo-renaissance building designed by the architect regionalist Aníbal González, the Archaeological Museum of Seville dismissed on Wednesday a dark stage of its history with the release of their comprehensive rehabilitation. A milestone that comes to remedying the profound impairment of a venue whose state of conservation prevents, from more than a decade ago, to state with full guarantees of safety some of the archaeological gems most important of the South of the Iberian peninsula. His exemplary case, to the head, is the treasure of the Carambolo, wonder of the tartessian civilisation made up of 21 pieces of gold and that should be the star of the collection (but that until the day of today, this is held in the vault of a bank).
In this way, the Archaeological museum will permanently close down its doors on the 12th of January to prepare for their rehabilitation, a project designed by the architect Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra to meet, as the owner of the museum, the Ministry of Culture; whereas, the Board of Andalusia will proceed to the work of inventory, packaging, and disposal of his collection, which is encrypted into a million pieces. The work of cataloguing, which will have a duration of one year, will be completed by early 2021, the date set by the regional government to inaugurate an exhibition in the former convent of Santa Inés, which, under the title Open for works, will host a selection of his most outstanding works as the headquarters of a transient of the museum.
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The councilor of Culture of the Junta of Andalusia, Patricia Well, yesterday made the announcement of the transfer of the pieces in the museum next to the monumental Diana the Huntress, a piece from the archaeological site of Itálica, which remains in the museum in seville without moving since 1947. In this regard, the minister confessed that it is a move of “large-scale”, in respect “to strictly conform to the requirements of security, transport and control of environmental parameters in order to preserve the collection with all the guarantees for the duration of the transformation of the building”.
In the process of packing will be used to 16,000 boxes and containers approved, in addition to almost a thousand other wooden boxes that must be manufactured especially for the occasion. All of this will be kept in the Logistics Centre of the Cultural Heritage of La Rinconada (Sevilla).
so Much for the shuttle as for the remodeling of the building has been “fundamental” institutional cooperation between the Ministry of Culture and Sport, which holds the ownership of the Museum, and the ministry of Culture and Heritage of the Junta de Andalucía, manager of the museum institution, assured Of the Well.
Project delayed from 2007
The project of rehabilitation of the Archaeological site of Seville began to take shape in 2007, when they ripped out the first negotiations between the two Administrations and drafted a plan museological, approved both by the Ministry and by the ministry of Culture. That document was “the basis” for the ideas competition held in 2009 for the hiring of the design of the rehabilitation of the building and the modernization of its facilities.
After that, in 2010, the competition was resolved in favor of the proposal presented by the study of Vázquez Consuegra, whose initial design would involve works and improvements in the amount of approximately 36 million euros, Patricia del Pozo recognized the “budgetary difficulties” that marked those years (in allusion to the economic crisis of 2011) and “the austerity measures to which they were subjected by the public administrations”.
In this way he justified that, in spite of the choice of the architectural project, the procurement of the works execution of the same “does not have continuity,” in the General State Budget (PGE) of those years —between 2010 and 2018—. However, as has told the adviser andalusian Culture, in may of last year was finally “recovered” the project and commissioned Vázquez Consuegra a “modification” of the same, whose cost has been estimated at around 20.7 million, 15 less than had been budgeted in the original project. According to the new forecasts, the Archaeological Museum will open its doors at the end of 2022.
