Museo de Artes y Costumbres Populares de Sevilla, Spain

The Museum of Arts and Popular Customs of the city of Seville, (Spain), is located in the Parque de María Luisa, within Plaza de América, popularly called “parque de las palomas”. On the other side of the square is the Archaeological Museum. It was the Pavilion of Ancient Art of the Ibero-American Exhibition of 1929.

The Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, Seville is state-owned but managed by the Regional Ministry of Culture of Andalusia. It is one of the museums dedicated to the promotion and research of our anthropological and ethnographical heritage. Spanish law protects heritage such as this, including not just objects to be displayed in a museum; it also covers the study and documentation of the knowledge, skills and active behaviour that maintain long-established heritage in our daily lives.

In its early days as a museum it housed a large number of collections, mainly coming from the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville, being the most important, in quality as in quality. These funds include:
Aguiar collection of costumbrista painting;
Soria Collection of Oriental tiles and ivories;
Orleans collection, some pieces;
Collection Gestoso, some pieces.

There are also minor contributions from various Andalusian museums such as:
Archaeological Museum of Seville, collection of Sevillian tiles;
Museum of the Spanish People;
Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia.

The citizens of Seville also put their grain of sand contributing to increase collections, especially in its early years and over time, these collaborations served to fill up gaps that were missing. Among these shortcomings were:
Textile funds;
Agricultural tools;
Household tools;
Musical instruments.

The section concerning the deposit is being completed when the Seville City Council decides that the museum should be the custodian of its collection of Originals of Seville Spring Festival Posters, which, since its exhibition in the museum’s halls, has traveled to different places of Europe and Japan, completely exhausting its catalog for sale.

Also, the Ministry of Culture acquires the Mencos Collection, to deposit it equally in the museum, this collection comprises the most complete repertoire of lithographs and photochromic posters of Fair and Holy Week.

The Loty Collection is also acquired by the Ministry of Culture, this collection is made up of more than 2000 antique glass plaques which record a multitude of details of cities and Andalusian life from the early twentieth century until 1936, becoming an important archive Image history.

In 2001 the Directorate General of Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture acquired the Apelluz Ethnographic Collection, composed of 168 pieces of different materials and ethnographic character.
Another source of funding for the funds was a series of fieldwork that was developed in that sense, giving fruit to the following list of donations:
Cooperage workshop, donated by Claudio Bernal (last cooper of Seville). Collected by the researcher Carmen Ortiz;
Workshop of guitar builder Francisco Barba. Documented by Andrés Carretero;
Teacher workshop Filigrana, builder of chopsticks;
Dorador workshop. Documented by Esther Fernández;
Workshop of goldsmiths donated by the master goldsmith of Seville D Fernando Marmolejo Camargo.

As of May 2006, there are up to eight different workshops.

Among the latest acquisitions can be counted on the one realized by the Ministry of Culture at the beginning of 2005 and that consisted of a collection of benditeras property of D. Carlos Palacios Tardez. The pieces come from the main ceramist production centers of the Iberian Peninsula: Manises, Alcora, Talavera, Teruel, La Bisbal, Triana, etc. The chronology of composition is similarly varied, with copies from the 15th and 16th centuries being more Many made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

There is also the collection acquired by Doña Carmen Contreras by the Ministry of Culture, at the end of 2005, consisting of more than 150 old toys of a great variety, among them there are 70 dolls, cards, stamps, comics, tin toys , Cardboard, wood, dollhouse, educational games, mechanos, movie projectors, etc.

The building housing the museum was built by architect Aníbal González as part of the group of buildings in the Plaza de América for the 1929 Ibero-American Exhibition. It was first called the Pavilion of Industries, Manu-facturing, and Decorative Arts, then the Pavilion of Ancient Arts and Artistic Industries, and, at a later date, the Mudéjar Pavilion.

The Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions was established here in 1972 and opened to the public in 1973. The building has four floors, giving a surface area of close to 8.000 m², spread between the public facilities and inhouse services (conservation, restoration, research, promotion and administration).

In addition to the permanent galleries, the facilities open to the public include the audiovisual projection rooms, where visitors can view documentaries produced by the museum’s Research and Promotion Departments on traditional Andalusian life, and an extensive area dedicated to temporary exhibitions with displays of the collections from the storage area of the museum itself and other similar institutions.