Exhibitions
When artists play
A century of toys, memory and imagination arrives at the Toy Museum of Catalonia through the La Mirada Ingenua collection.
There is an age when everything can be a toy. A box can become a house, a figure a character and any object at the beginning of a story. Over time, that ability to play seems to be left behind, but some artists have managed to preserve it as a way of looking at and understanding the world. The toy, in their hands, ceases to be just an object intended for childhood and is transformed into memory, imagination, research and, also, a form of creation.
It is precisely in this shared territory between the child's gaze and artistic practice that Artist's Toys: a Century of Illustrious Antics, from the La Mirada Ingenua collection , is located, the exhibition presented by the Toy Museum of Catalonia and which proposes to explore a century of relationships between artists, writers and the world of play.
This is the perspective proposed by the Toy Museum of Catalonia with Artist's Toys: a Century of Illustrious Antics, from the La Mirada Ingenua collection , an exhibition that establishes a dialogue between art, childhood and play based on a set of toys, objects and documents linked to artists and writers of the 20th century.
The exhibition, which can be visited from September 26, 2026 to January 7, 2027, is part of the La Mirada Ingenua collection, made up of pieces that allow us to approach the different ways in which creators have observed, represented, collected or incorporated the world of games throughout their careers.
Rather than presenting the toy as a simple piece intended to entertain children, the exhibition proposes understanding it as a cultural object. An object capable of preserving memories, awakening associations, activating the imagination and, in some cases, questioning the boundaries between art and everyday life.
The relationship between artists and toys is particularly suggestive because it questions the strict separation between the adult world and the child's world. The artist can once again look at objects with a curiosity similar to that of a child, dismantling their predictable uses and discovering new possibilities. The toy thus ceases to be just something to play with and becomes a way of thinking.
In this sense, Joguets d'artista also proposes a vindication of the naive gaze as a creative attitude. A gaze capable of being surprised by the seemingly banal and of finding an artistic possibility in everyday objects. Play, like art, allows us to imagine other worlds, alter the rules and invent new realities.
The exhibition can be visited until January 7, 2027, while the official inauguration will take place on Saturday, October 17, at 12:30 p.m., in the Open Room of the Toy Museum of Catalonia.
The proposal is completed with a specific publication that collects the contents of the exhibition and which becomes the third edition of a new editorial line initiated with the exhibition Glamurosa Barbie . A way of expanding the experience beyond the museum rooms and of leaving a record of a heritage that, often from the discretion of small objects, also explains part of our cultural history.
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