Museum

This panorama of the museums of Spain focuses on collections that represent a true symbol of the country's identity. In a wonderful way museums bring back to society that which society itself has created, reinterpreting and re-presenting the best of a nation's "personality" through the objects that have endured as a testimony of its history. This journey through some of Spain's most notable Fine Art museums, especially those outside Madrid, allows us to delve deep into Spanish culture and character.

Any museum, especially a national museum, is also a history book. We enter it to contemplate the individual works it holds: to enjoy and, to the degree we can, understand them individually. But a museum also has its own melody in addition to the individual notes, and to comprehend that single entity, composed from objects that are often widely divergent, is to understand a piece of history. Not only, not even mainly, about the artists' history but rather of the people who looked at them, then organized and arranged the works. The museum's sensibility comes into play in that history, and with that the circumstances surrounding it, the society, its government and political elements, its faith and beliefs, and perhaps also the ways in which those beliefs have changed. The impulse behind collecting and the forms of displaying each period are children of their time and, as such, museums bring that time-stamp with them.

GRIGORY POTEMKIN WAS THE FIRST OWNER OF THE TAURIDE PALACE IN ST. PETERSBURG, WHICH WAS BUILT IN 1783-1789 TO AN ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT BY IVAN STAROV. THE MANSION'S ORIGINAL NAME WAS THE "HORSE GUARDS HOUSE" AND IT WAS INTENDED ONLY FOR CEREMONIAL RECEPTIONS. ON APRIL 28 1791 IT WAS WHERE HIS HIGHNESS THE FIELD MARSHALL GENERAL, NOVOROSSIYSK GOVERNOR GENERAL AND CONQUEROR OF THE CRIMEA THREW A GRAND BALL IN HONOUR OF CATHERINE THE GREAT AND THE TAKLNG OF ISMAIL. IN AUGUST 1792 THE PALACE REVERTED TO THE CROWN IN REPAYMENT OF THE DEBTS OF THE SUDDENLY DECEASED PRINCE. THE FUNDS FOR FURTHER ALTERATIONS INTENDED BY POTEMKLN (FOR WHICH FYODOR VOLKOV HAD BEEN ENGAGED) AND THE PERFECTION OF THE PARK WERE NOW COMING FROM THE EMPRESS. SHE TOOK SO MUCH OF A FANCY TO THE PALACE THAT SHE MOVED INTO IT AS HER NEW RESIDENCE AS EARLY AS SEPTEMBER 1792 WITHOUT WAITING FOR CONSTRUCTION WORK TO BE COMPLETED.

America's great collections are almost exclusively based on private initiatives, sometimes subsidised by direct public support and a sympathetic tax system. These varied histories, often historic microcosms of the social and economic events of their times, make for many different stories. One of the country's most interesting and unexpected collections, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, was built partly on the profits of the hugely successful and transformative domestic invention of the late-19th century, the Singer Sewing Machine. With architectural expansion at the Clark Institute continuing, some of its greatest works by the French Impressionists are on a world tour: the exhibition "From Paris: A Taste for Impressionism Paintings from the Clark" is currently at London's Royal Academy, after four previous stops in America and Europe; future showings include Montreal, Japan, Shanghai and Seoul, where "From Paris..." ends its journey in 2014.

The painting collection of the Lithuanian Art Museum includes about 300 canvases by famous Russian artists, reflecting the main trends of Russian art, which reached the museum in various periods and under various circumstances.