Vinyet Panyella leaves the direction of the museums after seven years of growth and projection

Vinyet Panyella i Balcells today leaves the direction and management of the Sitges Heritage Consortium, during her 65th birthday. It does so leaving the museums of Sitges with the maximum projection achieved and with different projects on their way to reinforce the map of the heritage of Sitges.

Vinyet Panyella accessed the management of the Sitges Heritage Consortium in November 2011, when the Cau Ferrat and the Maricel Museum were in the process of being reformed. Despite the pronounced economic crisis of the moment, Panyella managed with the different administrations to finance significant improvements in the project, to protect the patrimonial elements. The two museums reopened in December 2014 and from the beginning they attracted a significant volume of visitors, which multiplied the figures of the years before the reform, with an average of 80,000 visitors per year. Both the Cau Ferrar and the Maricel Museum achieved last January the distinction of Museums of National Interest by the Generalitat. or Local Catalan Government.

As director of the Museums of Sitges, Panyella has drawn up a cultural discourse in the different organisms managed by the Sitges Heritage Consortium, in order to disseminate heritage, make it visible and active and participate in the sociocultural dynamics of the city and from the country. The most obvious case was that of the central exhibition of the Year Ramon Casas, which was held in the Maricel Museum, not in Barcelona, as usual in this type of commemoration. The exhibition (which later traveled to Madrid and Palma) received 38,000 visitors and showed more than a hundred works by Casas and contemporary ones from some thirty collections, some international.

In addition to the exhibition by Ramon Casas, in these years, under the direction of Vinyet Panyella, there have been two more relevant exhibitions, which have been held in the halls of the Maricel Museum: those dedicated to the sculptor Gustau Violet and that of the Centenary of Maricel. In addition, Sitges Museums have also organized other medium-sized  exhibitions, such as those dedicated to Emerencià Roig i Raventós, Enric Morera, hydraulics tiles, logicofobistas or the nineteenth-century landscape of Joaquim Sunyer. Some of these samples have been co-produced with other organisms, such as Sitges City Council, the Biblioteca de Catalunya or the Film Festival.

In the section of projects, the management of Vinyet Panyella also leaves an outstanding legacy in the imminent reform of the Palau de Maricel (which will begin in the coming months and which involves an investment of 3 million euros contributed by the City Council of Sitges and the Diputación de Barcelona), the transfer of Can Falç (partially adapted and that will house a museum of the maritime and agricultural history of the city), the improvement of the Romantic Museum - Can Llopis (which will be executed in 2019) and the enlargement of the Stämpfli Foundation (to be inaugurated next March).

In the seven years that Panyella has held the management of the Sitges Heritage Consortium, the different spaces managed by this body have received 454,541 visitors, they have received 56 new works (acquired or loaned) and have called 850 cultural activities.

Panyella said goodbye this afternoon with a celebration at the Palau de Maricel offered by the workers and collaborators of the Sitges Heritage Consortium. Before, She had the opportunity to visit, with the couple formed by Pere and Anna Maria Stämpfli, the extension of the Stämpfli Foundation, where the new works arrived last week. The Stämpfli offered Panyella the first visit of the new facilities, in recognition of the support that the Consortium has carried out in the Foundation, with which they maintain a collaboration agreement in the management.