Museu Frederic Marès: the museum that seems like the mind of an obsessive collector (and what it teaches you)

What is Museu Frederic Marès and where does it come from?

Frederic Marès (1893-1991) lived 98 years. He was a sculptor — his works are in the Montjuïc Cemetery, in Sant Pau del Camp, on the façade of the Caixa Laietana. But his true work was accumulation. For eighty years he collected everything that the 19th century had produced in industrial quantities and that no one took seriously: mechanical toys, theater fans, ceramic pipes, antique keys, ivory combs, votive offerings, daguerreotypes, keychains, pieces of coral, shells, paperweights. In 1948 he donated the complex to Barcelona City Council — more than 50,000 objects. The museum occupies part of the old Palau Reial Major, next to the Cathedral.

Why go — and what's the purpose of your appointment with the artist?

What Marès teaches is not 'art'. Is obsession as an art form. Accumulating toys for seventy years is not trivial: it is building, without realizing it, an archeology of popular taste. A map of what ordinary people considered beautiful between 1820 and 1920. Marès' complete work - without his planning - is a more faithful portrait of the 19th century than any history book.

How to take advantage of it (concrete practice)

Go up to the Collector's Cabinet floor (the floor of 50,000 objects). Stay in front of any display case for ten minutes. Write down in your notebook: What objects do I collect, even if I don't realize it? Identify an obsession of your own. That obsession is probably the seed of your next work. The most useful appointment with the museum's artist is not to see the objects — it is to ask what objects your unconscious collects.

Why this place connects with Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way

The practice of the appointment with the artist that Julia Cameron prescribes in The Artist's Path has a principle: creativity needs to be fed before I can produce. Cameron calls it 'filling the well.' The metaphor is exact: if it doesn't rain, the well runs dry. If you don't expose your brain to non-work stimuli once a week, your ability to generate new ideas quietly declines, week by week.

Museu Frederic Marès is an ideal place for a date with the artist because it meets the three conditions that Cameron asks for: It takes you out of your routine (a place other than your work and home), does not require production (you are going to receive, not create), and exposes you to curated stimuli (someone with judgment decided this was worth watching). Three conditions, an hour or two, once a week. It is probably the practice with the best mental ROI that you are going to add to your routine.

If you haven't taken the course yet, this is the place to start. Your Artist's Path is the free 12-week program that applies Julia Cameron's method to your life — including two hours a week blocked off on your calendar for appointments like this. More about the course at the end of the post.