La Caixa

For my history of Palma in the Mediterranean class, each student was assigned a cultural center. We had to visit our assigned place then give a presentation to the class about the history of the building, the foundation that sponsors it, and the activities held there. My assigned place was the La Fundación de la Caixa. La Caixa itself is a bank, but it sponsors programs for the community and all sort of other awesomeness. I went to visit today (since my presentation is Monday) and I was generally pleased. I'm really not an artsy person, so I was actually glad that the exhibitions weren't solely paintings. 

The permanent exhibition is called La estética de Anglada Camarasa (The aesthetics of Anglada Camarasa). Hermen Anglada Camarasa was a Mallorcan painter who was known for his paintings having a "radiant plasticity" (which pretty much meant they like painting made with melted plastic). That part was fine, but like I said, I'm not really a super artsy person.

The first temporary exhibition is called Federico Fellino. El circo de las ilusiones (Federico Fellini. Circus of Illusions). Fellini was a quirky film maker with a cult following almost. His most famous film is probably La Dolce Vita with Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni from 1960. He also had some weird book of dreams that I think are drawing of his actual dreams or his imagined dreams. Most of the drawings were of giant large-chested nude women with teeny tiny little men. I'm not quite sure what that was about, but I just moved on to the next exhibition.

The second temporary exhibition is called Números de Buena Familia (Numbers of Good Family: I don't like this translation, but it was the one given by the museum). This exhibition was all about the history of numbers, the different types of numbers, how we use numbers in everyday life, and how numbers are used to estimate things. I liked this exhibit way more than the other two, but I'm a numbers person so this is just personal preference.

All in all, it was a cute place to spend an hour or two. There's really only three main exhibitions, so if none of them interest you (or if you don't have a class project) I don't really see why anyone would go. Honestly, I was more interested in the building itself. La Caixa bought what was once the Gran Hotel, which was the first hotel in Mallorca and was super ritzy back in the day. The architecture and detail that went into this building is amazing and is worth the trip itself. And seeing as how entrance is free, vale la pena to check out the exhibitions since you're already there.

View of La Caixa at night