The exhibition ‘Rupestre. The First Shrines’. of the Archaeological Museum of Alicante has won the German Design Award for the pioneering contribution of its architectural project to the international exhibition scene. Through this competition, the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology recognizes and celebrates products, projects, manufacturers and designers from all corners of the world.
The vice-president and deputy for Culture, Julia ParraThe MARQ has valued this recognition “as further proof of the exhibition quality of the MARQ, which offers unique proposals thanks to an extraordinary multidisciplinary collaborative work in which, as in the case of Rupestre, resulted in a brilliant staging that is now internationally recognized’.
The exhibition, designed by the Director of Architecture of the Diputación de Alicante, Rafael Pérez, and the architect Ángel Rocamora, was exhibited last year at the MARQ and until its closing on January 5, 2019 received more than 85,000 visits. The jury of these prestigious awards, which focus on outstanding achievements in the different fields of design and communication, highlighted RUPESTRE’s original and enveloping exhibition design, especially the cave-like polygonal ceiling structure in one of the halls.
Pérez highlighted the difficulty of the project and said that, to a large extent, its success is due to the realism of the reproductions of our first Art. “In this exhibition the difficulty was that we could not bring the paintings to the museum, hence the use of casts or drawings of the originals to faithfully reflect the power of our rock art in real size,” he said.
The exhibition discourse focused on the pictorial remains, carved on the rock more than 10,000 years ago, through a museography project that extended through the three temporary exhibition halls of the MARQ and invited visitors to a journey through time. The objective was to highlight the cave paintings and explain their origin, interpretation and context, with the peculiarity of lacking tangible objects.
From a walk through the Altamira Cave, a universal reference of Paleolithic art, to the contemplation of the contemporary art of the Mallorcan Miquel Barceló, to the macro-schematic art of the Sanctuary of Pla de Petracos, the exhibition had a great impact in the province and received more than 85,000 visits.
Texts via: Marq (Múseo Arqueológico de Alicante)
