At the threshold of its tenth anniversary, the MUN fills its entire exhibition space with the most emblematic works from its Collection, offering a journey through its history—and, with it, a fascinating tour through 185 years of art.

Titled Colección Museo Universidad de Navarra. Cuatro décadas (Museum University of Navarra collection: four decades), the exhibition opens today, Tuesday, September 24. At 7:00 PM, a public masterclass will be held with the exhibition curators, Valentín Vallhonrat and Ignacio Miguéliz, who will provide key insights into this extensive artistic journey. Admission is free, with tickets available at the box office or online. The exhibition, comprising more than a thousand pieces, will be open throughout the academic year, until next August.

This morning, the MUN’s general director, Jaime García del Barrio, along with the exhibition curators, presented the proposal to the media. García del Barrio described the exhibition as “the grand unveiling of the Collection, showcasing all its lines of work and research.” He further emphasized that it presents “a profound yet clear narrative.”

The MUN Collection began in 1981 with a donation from photographer José Ortiz Echagüe to the University of Navarra. Nearly three decades later, in 2008, Navarrese collector María Josefa Huarte donated her contemporary art collection with the intention of establishing a museum to house it. Over the past forty years, the collection has continued to expand, incorporating works across all artistic disciplines through new acquisitions, donations, and commissions. In the 1990s, the University of Navarra engaged with artists, photographers, and cultural managers Rafael Levenfeld (+) and Valentín Vallhonrat, who conceived a collection project aimed at exploring the evolution of visual arts and the construction of images that help us understand and interpret reality. They also analyzed photography both as a document and as an artistic expression. Today, four decades later, the MUN holds and showcases a unique photography collection, featuring works by both national and international artists created in Spain, spanning from the origins of photographic technique to the present day.

“Our initial intention was to create a photography collection in Spain because one didn’t exist at the time,” Vallhonrat recalled, noting the contrast with other countries. He added that “every piece that has entered the Collection has done so for a reason: it connects with other pieces” and provides access to “a rich life experience, linked to freedom and knowledge.” He referenced “art’s function of offering us spaces we might not otherwise reach, spaces that become our own.”

This exhibition has a threefold objective, aligned with María Josefa Huarte’s vision, as Ignacio Miguéliz explained: “Contemporary art is often misunderstood and rejected; she wanted it to become part of people’s lives, to be explained, so that through understanding, it could be accepted or rejected with reason.” He also highlighted the importance of research and dissemination, as well as preservation, ensuring that this collection is passed on “to the future.”

Miguéliz also outlined the exhibition’s structure. Colección Museo Universidad de Navarra. Cuatro décadas begins with “Multiple Origins in a Collection: The María Josefa Huarte Collection and the Creation of the Museum,” which showcases the collector’s donation—47 works by 18 different artists from the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century, including internationally renowned names such as Kandinsky.

Since the Museum’s inauguration in January 2015, the collection has grown through acquisitions, loans, and donations, expanding to include paintings, sculptures, photography, video, and installations. Visitors will find these works distributed across four main galleries: Figuration (Sorolla, Picasso, Cecilia Paredes…), The Wall as a Space of Creation (Tàpies, Oteiza, Brazuelo), Informalist Abstraction (Rothko, Maselli), and Geometric Abstraction (Palazuelo, Chillida, Sempere, Elena Asins).

The exhibition continues with “Multiple Beginnings for Multiple Visions,” featuring the Ortiz Echagüe Collection, daguerreotype and calotype techniques, and works produced through the Tender Bridges artistic residency program, which facilitates dialogue between contemporary artists and the Collection. Joan Fontcuberta inaugurated this project and also created the first proposal developed using Artificial Intelligence at the MUN. The exhibition then explores the integration of audiovisual formats into the Collection, starting with Navarrese artist Carlos Irijalba and his piece Inertia, followed by video installations by Daniel Canogar (Sikka ingentium). Additionally, two new areas of focus within the MUN Collection are photographic collections from Latin America and the Middle East.

The exhibition concludes with “From the 19th to the 21st Century: A Four-Decade Journey,” beginning with wet collodion and albumen paper techniques, followed by pictorialism and the avant-garde in Spanish photography, as well as social documentary photography from the early 20th century. The exhibition then features artists such as Pierre Gonnord, Bleda y Rosa, Manolo Laguillo, and Roland Fischer, along with documentary, propaganda, advertising, and photojournalistic works from the Spanish Civil War. It also highlights the evolution of photography in the latter half of the 20th century, the intersection of different art forms, and the emergence of new formats in the 21st century.