Barcelona - Second Museum Day

Two other museums caught my attention for this trip. One of them I saw a on a banner hanging from a light pole near Sagrada Familia. Who knew that Barcelona would be home to the Hash, Hemp and Marijuana Museum?

It was an interesting collection divided into various subject areas. The first area covered the biology of the plant which was very informative. I never realized that there were male and female plants, and it's the female that is grown for smoking. Also, hash is resin collected from the leaves, I thought they were some how cooked down to make hash.

One of my favorite rooms was one with an audio visual presentation of marijuana in songs. Never gave it much thought, but there are a good number of them. There were also rooms on the commercial production of hemp which has had many uses over the years. Columbus would not have discovered The new world without hemp for the ropes on his ships.

The next museum on my list was the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona, a really nice design museum. There I saw 

a nice display on the development of graphic arts in Spain with some pretty posters for DDT amount some really 

nice tourism posters. 

The highlight of the museum for me was the floor devoted to fashion. Unlike lots of museums that display clothing without much context, here the collection was broken into various periods of styles. The display focused on how fashion was used to reduce, enlarge and elongate the human figure. Each display case included a manquin that showed the changes. Sometimes the waists were very tiny with huge hips built out to the sides. Each case also included a recent designer dress showing the same effect.  What pain men designers inflicted on women with these corsets.

There were also displays on products that were invented in the area and small collections of pottery, glass, wall paper and textiles. Amazing to see fabric that was dated back to the 4th century. I guess that they didn't have H&M and Zara back then with cheap, but not lasting fabrics.

Por Favor by Nahuel Tajan

It is also worth mentioning that most of the neighborhoods in Barcelona have cultural centers that offer classes and have exhibitions. At my local center I caught a small exhibition by Nahuel Tajan that had some thought provoking paintings.