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Mallorca Art Comes To New York

New Yorkers are in for a Spanish treat this January and February if they visit an art exhibition to celebrate the Balearic Island of Mallorca's display at the Spanish Institute.

Situated in central New York's Park Avenue, the Institute was set up in 1954 with the intention of promoting Spanish culture, and moved to it's current building after it was donated by Margaret Rockerfeller.

As well as art exhibitions the Institute offers New Yorkers lessons in speaking Spanish, and an understanding of Spain's economy and politics.

As well as promoting Spain's culture and language on an ongoing basis, the Institute generates extra publicity through an annual award, given to those who have promoted understanding between the US and Latin American countries, who predominantly speak Spanish.

The 2007 recipients were ex President Bill Clinton and the actress Penelope Cruz. Previous winners include Julio Iglesias, Rudolf Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg - both Mayors of New York City - Placido Dimingo and Henry Ford II.

The Mallorca art exhibition includes exhibits from 16 different painters, all from the era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the three best known painters being Richard Anckermann, Santiago Rusinol and Joaquim Sorolla, and while not on loan around the world the art can normally be found at the Museum of Modern Art in Mallorca's capital, Palma.

Mallorca was a magnet for artists at the time of the paintings as her countryside lent itself so well to landscapes, but the artists of the time would find the island a very different one today with much of the economy reliant on tourism. Mallorca has a history of over a hundred years of tourism and had one of the world's first hotels built for holidaymakers, but it is really since the 1950's that mass tourism came to the island.

Mallorca is the main island of the group that forms an archipelago called the Balearic Islands. Located in the Mediterranean off the east coast of the Spanish mainland, Mallorca is the largest of the Balearic Islands. Mallorca is also the most popular of the islands.

According to the 2005 census, the population of the city of Palma where the paintings have been loaned form was 375,048. The population of the entire area was estimated to be 517,285; the 12th-largest urban area of Spain. Approximately half of the total population of Mallorca lives in Palma.

But while the artists might not recognise all of modern Mallorca, there do remain for tourists and artists alike who want to experience the old Mallorca romantic villages mountainside and historic castles set in the rolling hills of the island.

Luckily for New Yorkers, if they visit the Queen Sofia Institute on Park Avenue, they can experience the old Mallorca without having to board a plane!