Egyptology is often remembered through its most dramatic moments: an archaeologist in the field, a tomb uncovered, a discovery entering the history books. But behind those moments were women whose notes, correspondence, teaching, research, and relationships helped build the field.

In this episode of TheCollector Podcast, we speak with Dr. Kathleen (Kate) Sheppard, professor of the history of science at Missouri S&T and author of Women in the Valley of the Kings and Tea on the Terrace. She explores the overlooked contributions of women in Egyptology and the social networks that shaped the field, revealing a history that looks very different when we move beyond its most famous names.

Historians weren’t necessarily looking for the women behind the resources. They were looking at what happened on a site, rather than asking who took the notes, who preserved the records, and whose work made it possible for us to know what happened there.

Women in Egyptology and the Making of the Field

Modern Egyptology took shape in the 19th century as scholars learned to read ancient Egyptian texts and archaeologists developed new ways to study and record the past. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Egyptology was drawing a swath of enthusiastic scholars, archaeologists, and travelers to Egypt.

Women were always part of this burgeoning field. Because Egyptology was still taking shape institutionally, women had unique opportunities to participate through research, teaching, and fieldwork. Still, many of their contributions aren’t mentioned in the most famous stories from the field, which tend to focus on headline-grabbing discoveries made by men.

In the episode, Dr. Sheppard shares her research on these women, the records they left behind, and the networks that supported their essential work. She also considers Egyptology’s ties to European imperialism and colonialism, offering a fuller picture of how the field developed and who helped shape it.

The Stories Hidden in Egyptology’s History

Dr. Sheppard’s research brings many of these overlooked figures back into view. In Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age, she introduces us to Egyptologists like Margaret Murray and Caroline Ransom Williams. Their stories show why seemingly ordinary records can matter so much to historians. In some cases, the careful records women kept are the reason we know what happened at all.

In Tea on the Terrace: Hotels and Egyptologists’ Social Networks from 1885–1925, Dr. Sheppard examines social environments like hotels where Egyptologists gathered, revealing how informal social networks shaped the discipline. Together, these studies offer a broader picture of Egyptology—one built not just on famous discoveries, but on the conversations, correspondence, and invisible labor that made those moments possible.

Rome was built by conquering new territory. So why did Emperor Hadrian decide to stop?

In conversation with TheCollector, archaeologist Dr. David Breeze reflects on his 50 years of scholarship on Hadrian’s Wall and the Roman frontiers. He explains what drove Hadrian to rethink Rome’s expansion, and how the Wall became part of a complex system of military control, movement, and cultural exchange.

Hadrian—having seen the terrible death toll of warfare, and realizing that the empire didn’t have enough men to keep fighting forever—decided he was going to define the limits of the empire in this way.

Hadrian’s Wall and the Roman Frontier

Construction of Hadrian’s Wall began in AD 122 after Emperor Hadrian’s visit to Britain. Stretching 80 Roman miles, or 73 miles (117 kilometers), from the River Tyne to the Solway Firth, it marked the empire’s northwestern frontier in Britain.

But the Wall was never simply a barrier. It formed part of a larger frontier network of forts, milecastles, watchtowers, roads, and controlled crossings that allowed Rome to monitor movement, maintain its military presence, and manage interactions beyond the frontier.

For Dr. Breeze, the Wall reveals that Roman frontiers were not fixed lines separating civilizations. They were active spaces where people, goods, and ideas moved between communities.

Life at the Edge of the Roman Empire

For the thousands of soldiers stationed along Hadrian’s Wall, the frontier was a place of everyday life as well as military service. Roman forts became communities with homes, workshops, religious spaces, and families, populated by people from across the empire.

After 50 years of studying Hadrian’s Wall and the wider Roman frontier, Dr. Breeze has helped transform our understanding of these landscapes. His research shows that the story of the Wall extends beyond Rome’s military power to the soldiers, civilians, and communities who lived along the frontier. It also challenges traditional Roman portrayals of the so-called “Barbarians” beyond the frontier, revealing a world shaped by trade, diplomacy, conflict, and cultural exchange.

How does a non-royal court official become a god? That question lies at the heart of Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu’s story. And it’s a story that stretches from high office in ancient Egypt’s 18th Dynasty to a millennia-long afterlife.

In conversation with TheCollector, Egyptologist Dr. Aidan Dodson—co-author of a forthcoming biography—explained how this transformation occurred. We also discussed what can be reconstructed of Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu’s life, and why his funerary monuments and later cult continue to intrigue scholars today.

When you’re writing about ancient Egypt, you’re working with only a tiny fraction of what once existed. We don’t have diaries, memoirs, or anything like a modern biographical record.

In some cases, you’re not even entirely sure whether individuals existed in the way you think they did, because the evidence is so fragmentary.

Who Was Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu?

Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu was a high official of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty. While not of royal birth, he rose to prominence in the court of Amenhotep III, where he served as a scribe, architect, priest, and public official. He was granted unusually elaborate funerary arrangements for a non-royal official, including a rock-cut tomb chapel and a dedicated cult temple. Centuries after his death, he came to be venerated as a healing deity.

A New Biography of an Ancient Official

Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu, High Official, Architect, Demigod: His Life and Afterlife is the first full-length English-language biography of one of ancient Egypt’s most unusual non-royal figures. It belongs to the Life and Afterlives series, of which Dodson is editor. Drawing on fragmentary evidence from the 18th Dynasty and later traditions, the book reconstructs a life at the court of Amenhotep III. It also traces his posthumous transformation into a healing deity.

Artemisia Gentileschi’s Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy was once lost to history. It is now on permanent display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

This rediscovered masterpiece demonstrates how Gentileschi transformed Italian Baroque painting with her radically human depictions. We talked with Dr. Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, Curator and Head of Italian and Spanish Painting, about why this acquisition matters so much—for both the Gallery and the artist’s legacy.

What’s incredible about this painting is how it communicates transformation through one figure. The Magdalene’s body, her hands, her posture—everything tells a story of psychological and emotional change.

Why Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy Is a Baroque Masterpiece

Painted at the height of Artemisia Gentileschi‘s extraordinary career, Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy portrays the biblical figure in an intimate moment of spiritual rapture.

Traditional religious imagery often depicted the Magdalene alongside overt symbols of her penitence, such as a skull or a book. Gentileschi, however, narrows her focus to the Magdalene’s emotional and physical experience. Rather than illustrating a narrative, this painting captures a poignant psychological moment, reflecting a broader Baroque fascination with visualizing a subject’s inner world.

Artemisia doesn’t just show a penitent woman. She shows a fully embodied, sentient woman, alive with presence and complexity. That’s what makes her work so powerful.

Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy was virtually unknown until a 2011 scholarly article identified it based on an old photograph. In early 2026, the National Gallery of Art announced its acquisition of the reattributed painting into its permanent collection of Italian and Spanish paintings, describing it as “one of the finest ever made” by Artemisia Gentileschi.

Fearless Women and Bold Baroque Paintings: The Genius of Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–c. 1654) was a pioneering Italian Baroque painter. She is especially remembered for her down-to-earth yet dramatic depictions of biblical heroines. With her artist father’s encouragement, Artemisia was painting professionally by age 15. She overcame significant obstacles and trauma to become a commercially successful and internationally renowned artist during her lifetime.

Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy is now on display at the National Gallery of Art in Gallery 29 on the Main Floor of the West Building. Admission is free.

In Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire, historian and author Dr. Emma Southon offers a first-of-its-kind exploration of the enslaved people who built and sustained the storied empire. In this interview, we discussed slavery’s central role in ancient Rome and why these stories have so often been left out of history.

The emperors and senators are very much the outliers of what Roman life was like. What if all we had left from 21st-century Britain were Queen Elizabeth and Kate Middleton, and we tried to say that was what life was like? Or if all we had was Jeff Bezos, and we said that was what life was like in 21st-century America?

Slavery in the Roman Empire

Slavery was integral to the Roman Empire, and enslaved people made up a shockingly large percentage of the population. Unlike more modern race-based slavery, people in ancient Rome were typically enslaved during wars and military conquests. Under Roman law, enslaved people were treated as property rather than citizens with rights. Many were prisoners captured as Rome expanded across Europe and the Mediterranean. Others were born into slavery, as children inherited the status of their enslaved mothers.

The scale of Roman slavery is huge. The empire cannot exist without it. It is so profoundly embedded in every part of the empire and the culture of being Roman that I wanted to show just how vast it is.

Not Built in a Day Hits U.S. Shelves on June 30

With expertise, empathy, and the occasional dash of dark humor, Dr. Southon’s work—including books like A Rome of One’s Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire and her podcast History Is Sexy—champions the untold stories of marginalized Romans. Her latest book sheds light on the experiences of enslaved people, reconstructing their lives through material evidence often overlooked in traditional tellings of Roman history.

Published by Simon & Schuster in the U.S., Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire is available from June 30, 2026. The book is also available in the U.K. as Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire.

Do you believe in magic? People across the ancient world certainly did, from Egypt and Mesopotamia to Greece and Rome.

We sat down with Dr. Jeffrey Spier—curator of Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World at the Toledo Museum of Art—to explore the fascinating crossroads of magic and the mundane.

There’s this universality about magic. We all have this desire—whether through magical texts and practices, or medicine and science—to make sense of or exert influence over the unseen.

Everyday Magic in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia

In Egypt and Mesopotamia, magic was embedded in daily life. Priests performed rituals, created amulets, and inscribed protective texts. And these practices were no secret—rather, they were carried out publicly in accordance with established religious traditions.

Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World illustrates how Egyptians and Mesopotamians sought to influence unseen forces. Among the artifacts on view are ancient spells and rituals recorded on papyri and inscribed on objects.

Magic and Suspicion in the Classical World

The Greeks and Romans viewed magic with a bit more suspicion. Mythical sorceresses like Circe and Medea embodied both the fear and fascination surrounding magic, reflecting a broader cultural anxiety about the perceived foreign origins of magical power.

Yet, behind closed doors, Greeks and Romans regularly turned to spells, charms, and even curse tablets for practical needs, from physical healing to romantic escapades. In the ancient metropolis of Alexandria, diverse traditions converged into a shared magical culture at the height of the Roman Empire.

How the Cursed! Exhibition Brings Ancient Magic Together

Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World opened at the Toledo Museum of Art on March 21 and runs through July 3, 2026. The exhibition gathers dozens of ancient artifacts to reveal how magical practices evolved across cultures.

Few artists are as closely associated with a single color as Vincent van Gogh is with yellow. The van Gogh Museum’s exhibition of Yellow. Beyond van Gogh’s Colour is the first to explore this connection in depth. It also shows how yellow has shaped the wider world of art, culture, and sensory experience.

We went behind the scenes with Edwin Becker, Head of Exhibitions at the van Gogh Museum and co-curator of Yellow. Beyond van Gogh’s Colour. He explained the enduring impact of van Gogh’s Sunflowers and looked back on the unique challenge of transforming a single color into a multi-faceted, multi-sensory exhibition.

Yellow. Beyond van Gogh’s Colour is a thematic, multi-sensory exhibition—an adventurous tour through the many meanings of the color yellow.

van Gogh’s Sunflowers and the Many Meanings of Yellow

In 1888, Vincent van Gogh settled in the south of France, where he was captivated by the bright sunlight and saturated colors of the landscape. From Arles, he wrote an effusive letter to his brother Theo: “Sunshine, a light which, for want of a better word, I can only call yellow—pale sulfur yellow, pale lemon, gold. How beautiful yellow is!”

The color yellow became so closely tied to van Gogh that friends decorated his coffin with yellow flowers at his funeral in 1890.

With Sunflowers, you have this feeling of a very cheerful, sunny color—this bright yellow in all its different tones. On the other hand, there is also a kind of melancholy in the flowers themselves, already fading away in the vase. And, at the same time, you realize how daring it must have been for someone to paint this in 1889.

Naturally, Yellow. Beyond van Gogh’s Colour centers around Sunflowers. But rather than focusing only on Vincent van Gogh and his life, the exhibition paints an incredibly wide-reaching picture of the color yellow.

Works by van Gogh’s contemporaries are shown alongside objects ranging from perfumes to party dresses. Together, these reveal how the same color can take on different meanings over time and in different contexts. The exhibition also features immersive installations by Olafur Eliasson, where yellow is experienced through light, space, and perception.

Yellow. Beyond van Gogh’s Colour was on view at the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from February 13 to May 17, 2026. A corresponding publication, Yellow, is available via the van Gogh Museum shop.

According to legend, the Library of Alexandria was a great repository of knowledge constructed in the capital of Hellenistic Egypt. It is reported that over the course of 300 years, it accumulated almost half a million papyrus scrolls and contained much of the knowledge of the ancient world. Unfortunately, a significant section of the library was burned in 48 BCE during Julius Caesar’s civil wars, and it suffered further devastating destruction in the 3rd century CE. It was assumed that the library lost its importance, but new excavations of the site suggest that between the 5th and 7th centuries CE, the site of the Library may have become a major learning complex, called an Akadēmeia, which was a kind of prototype Late Antique university.

Note: In April 2025, at the American Center for Research in Egypt (ACRE) Conference, Richard Marranca sat down with Kholoud Mohamed Shawky to discuss the Akadēmeia of Alexandria in Late Antiquity; this article is the fruit of their conversation. Richard attended the conference on an award from the Kogan Fund of the Religion Department at Montclair University.

Kholoud worked as an archaeologist for Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquity and participated in the study of the last lecture hall at the Alexandria site. She is pursuing a PhD in Alexandria University and wrote her master’s thesis on “The Architecture of Educational Buildings in Egypt at the late Roman period, in the light of the recent discoveries at Kom el-Dikka, in Alexandria”

The Library of Alexandria: A Hellenistic Knowledge Repository

After Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, he established the most famous of his eponymous cities on the northern coast of Egypt, Alexandria. Established in 332 BCE and then constructed under the Ptolemaic dynasty, the Egyptian city was designed following the Hippodamian grid plan of Greek cities, creating the ancient nation’s first Hellenistic city. The city plan consisted of two main roads intersecting at right angles, with side streets running parallel to form a chessboard-like pattern. According to the Greek geographer Strabo, who visited in 25 BCE when Egypt was under Roman rule, one of the most important complexes in the city was the Museion, the temple dedicated to the goddesses of science and arts. The Library of Alexandria was attached to the temple, alongside a hall for scholarly meetings, a dining room, and public gardens.

This description evokes the Greek gymnasia, institutions of physical exercise that existed in Athens from the 6th century BCE onwards. It also brings to mind the schools of the Athenian philosophers, including the Κυνόσαργες (Cynosarges, associated with the Cynic Antisthenes), the Ἀκαδημία (Academy of Plato), and the Λύκειον (Lyceum of Aristotle), where philosophers developed their ideas and taught the youth in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE.

Excavating the Library of Alexandria

In 2005, an Egyptian-Polish mission, working at the Kom El-Dikka archaeological site, which encompasses the site of the ancient library, announced the discovery of 22 lecture halls in the center of Late Antique Alexandria, which flourished around the 6th century CE. These halls were designed as elongated exedrae, which are arcades with benched seats. They had three or five graded benches running along three sides, centered on some small steps that led to a main teaching chair, and a podium on the floor that confronts both the benches and the professor’s chair. Three of these lecture halls also had a cistern. Ten of the halls had anterooms with no traces of benches, while the anterooms of the three largest halls, measuring 17 meters long, had benches.

All the lecture halls were located within a significant urban complex that was built around big imperial baths flanked by monumental colonnades. In addition to the exedrae, numerous public buildings were built around it, including spacious bathing chambers that could accommodate hundreds of users every day, bathing pools, gymnasia for sports, and public latrines. A complex system of furnaces was used for heating water, which was drawn from the nearby cisterns. All the buildings are oriented north-south, except for two double halls with an external apse towards the east.

An Antique University

It is worth noting that scholars and researchers excavating the site have referred to these unique halls as the “Akadēmeia.” They describe it as the prototype of a new kind of educational organization characterized by regular attendance and study of science (e.g., arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) in permanent buildings, with specialized professors, and a complete scientific curriculum.

In Late Antiquity, as part of the Byzantine Roman Empire between the 5th and 7th centuries CE, Alexandria rose to prominence as an intellectual center of higher education, attracting both students from the aristocracy and distinguished teachers. Many biographies of famous thinkers indicate that they spent time or resided in Alexandria. To name but a few, there was Proclus, one of the most famous pagan philosophers in Athens in the 5th century CE; the Arab physician and pagan philosopher Gessios of Petra; the Patriarch Severus of Antioch; the Neoplatonic philosopher Damascius; the mathematician Theon and his daughter Hypatia; and the physician Agapios. This concentration of great minds in Alexandria has earned it the nickname the “Oxford of Late Antiquity.” It now seems that more than just being a gathering of minds, Byzantine Alexandria also had the physical infrastructure to support this time of learning.

When the Christian rhetorician Procopius (c. 465-526 BCE) was heading the school of Gaza, he described Alexandria as ὴ οίκνή τὥν λόγων μήτηρ (the house of the mother of words), suggesting its important role in education and culture in the 5th and 6th centuries CE. Sadly, the Akadēmeia was largely destroyed with the Persian conqquered Egypt in the early 7th century CE.

When you picture samurai, you probably picture a warrior with a kabuto helmet and a katana. But the real story of the samurai is actually a lot more complicated than what you’ve seen on TV or even in most books.

We tackled this topic in an interview with Dr. Rosina Buckland, Curator of the Japanese Collections at the British Museum, and Professor Oleg Benesch, Professor of Modern History at the University of York.

The diversity of the samurai is often flattened in popular culture, but it’s six centuries of incredibly varied roles and social functions.

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Oleg Benesch

Buckland and Benesch recently co-authored Samurai, an illustrated catalogue accompanying the British Museum exhibition of the same name. As experts in Japanese culture and history, they offer their takes on pop culture phenomena, common misconceptions, material culture, and more during our conversation, which you can watch in full below.

Beyond the Sword: Understanding Japan’s Warrior Class

For centuries, the samurai were elite warriors serving powerful lords and Japan’s military government. But beyond the armor and the battles, the samurai were deeply involved in social, political, and cultural life in Japan. During the peaceful Edo Period, for example, many samurai functioned as major patrons of the arts.

The samurai class was technically abolished in the late 19th century. Still, they live on as a global icon of Japanese culture, from ukiyo-e prints to video games.

People think ‘samurai’ refers to a male warrior in armor holding a sword, but they had many roles across the centuries. Men, women, and children were all part of the samurai class.

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Rosina Buckland

Exploring a Warrior Tradition Through Material Culture

Samurai is on view at the British Museum from February 3 to May 4, 2026. The accompanying exhibition catalogue, co-published by the British Museum Press and University of Washington Press, is available for purchase here.

Both the exhibition and its catalogue are unique because they use real objects to tell the real story of the samurai from their beginnings as a medieval warrior class in Japan to their enduring legacy in global contemporary culture.

Since its inception, the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid has stood as a bastion of modern and contemporary art, housing some of the world’s most famous artworks, including Picasso’s Guernica. Under the leadership of its new director, Manuel Segade (since 2023), the museum is undergoing a profound metamorphosis.

TheCollector recently visited Reina Sofía and got a first-hand opportunity to view its recently renovated fourth floor and interview Manuel Segade on a wide range of issues, from the museum’s decision to spotlight multiple “forgotten” artists to his favorite artwork.

What’s Changing? Reina Sofía’s Five-Year Transformation

Since 2023, the museum has been changing. The change is “repurposing” the very architecture of Reina Sofía’s Sabatini and Nouvel buildings to better serve the art and the public. Segade outlines the timeline and the goal:

“This new presentation is the start of a three year transformation of the uses of the spaces in the museum’s headquarters. We’re changing one floor of the collection a year until 2028, because we are repurposing the spaces of our different buildings, leaving the upper floors of the old hospital—Sabatini building—for the collection and the ground floors and the spaces of our new Nouvel building for the temporary exhibitions’ program. This new presentation covers the last 50 years and gets through the end of the dictatorship of Franco to the present, as to say, the civic construction of the democratic arena in Spain.”

The “Forgotten” Artists Who Deserve the Spotlight

The museum’s fourth floor, which recently reopened to the public, recounts the art history of Spain over the past 50 years by way of 403 works by 224 artists. The new exhibition, titled Contemporary Art: 1975-Present, takes visitors back to the 1970s, the turbulent period when Spain transitioned from Franco’s 36-year dictatorship to democracy. The collection seeks to underscore the contribution of Spanish contemporary art to this process from 1975 to the present.

Of the total 403 works on show, 258 works (64%) are unexhibited. This means that new perspectives that had not been on view in past presentations of the museum’s permanent collection are now reaching audiences.

We asked Segade if this new presentation features any “forgotten” artists who particularly deserve the spotlight right now.

“So many… I think it is important to vindicate the early pioneers of conceptual art, like Paz Muro, whose irreverent actions were key to define our aesthetics in the 70s, or Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, whose continuous redefinition of what art is still provokes debate on our scene.”

Among these, there are also multiple women artists who were previously overlooked and are now receiving renewed attention. According to Segade:

“Also, there are a lot of women artists overseen in the past that should be valued for their contributions, like Paloma Navares and her new media feminist critiques or Salomé Cuesta questioning traditional optics and traditional perspective.”

Representing Women Artists

Another key feature of this new organization, as we previously mentioned, is the representation of women artists.

Of the total of 173 artists, 69 are women; a large number, but one that needs to increase in the future. Segade acknowledges the progress made, while remaining candid about the work that remains:

“We’ve introduced almost 35% of women artists, the biggest ever in the museum, but that clearly needs to increase: in 26,000 pieces in our collections, only the 15% are made by women artists.”

The role of women in this “new” Reina Sofía is more than a token gesture. It is a fundamental restructuring of the narrative:

“We really think that women were fundamental to produce the system of representation that we call contemporary art. The Second Wave of feminism is key in the formation of performance art and the struggles of the 70s happened in women artists’ bodies.”

Challenging Traditional Museum Narratives

Another change is the “hanging” itself. Eschewing a single, linear timeline, the museum now offers three distinct perspectives on the post-1975 era, forcing the viewer to engage with the art through different lenses.

The first thing a visitor sees upon entering the fourth floor is Juan Genovés’ Documento No… 1975, which sets the tone by addressing censorship and the relevance of basic rights. From there, the visitor moves to an introductory space featuring the following three chapters:

1. The Structures of Affect of the Spanish Transition: highlighting the emotional frailty of Spanish society during the period of democratic transition.
2. Material Counterculture: this chapter showcases the multiple subjectivities that remained underground during the period of Franco’s dictatorship.
3. Attempts at and Limits of an Institutional Regime for Art in Democracy: this chapter is concerned with the institutionalization of Spanish culture and art.

These three chapters mirror and serve as introductions to the three exhibition routes that the floor offers to visitors. “We don’t propose one but three different readings of the same period,” says Selgade. According to the museum’s director, the three tales presented in the exhibition are:

1. A History of Affect in Contemporary Art: an affective history of contemporary art.
2. The Powers of Fiction: Sculpture, New Materialisms, and Relational Aesthetics: a display of material culture—not only sculpture, but also what contemporary artists did to objects—and our relation with them.
3. A New Framework: The Institution, the Market, and the Art that Transcends Both: a tale of the institutional frame constructed to hold contemporary art in the last decades. Like that, the floor restarts back again in the 70s three different times.

The third route is particularly interesting for those interested in museums and heritage as it tells the story of the genealogy of the Museo Reina Sofía and the Spanish art system as well as how museums, as democratic institutions, offered a space and much-needed visibility to new forms of expression and social presence throughout the 20th and into the 21st century.

The Ever-Relevant Anti-War Message of Picasso’s Guernica

While the museum is currently highlighting its renovated and newly opened fourth floor, crowds still gather in front of its most famous artwork: Pablo Picasso’s Guernica.

“People still feels like getting it out of the street everytime a war starts anywhere on the world,” says Selgade. Picasso painted this grand, in scale and aspiration, work in 1937 in response to the bombing of the town of Guernica by 1937 the German aircraft of the Condor Legion, which Hitler had sent to aid Franco’s forces against the Republicans. The tragedy and pain that unfolded in Guernica was captured by Picasso in his work, and, for this reason, as Selgade notes:

“Guernica continues to be the most important declaration of ‘end to wars’ ever done.”

A Personal Perspective

As for his favorite object, Manuel Selgade tells us:

“Nowadays I love the terraces, where I can cross a penetrable sculpture of Venezuelan master Jesús Soto feeling the echoes of traffic from the street…”

As for the Museo Reina Sofía, it continues its journey toward 2028, undergoing a unique and exciting transformation. We are looking forward to seeing the changes unfold!