FUNDACIÓN BANCO SANTANDER

WEBSITE: WWW.DIAART.ORG
LOCATION: BOADILLA DEL MONTE, MADRID
NEAREST AIRPORT: MADRID-BARAJAS ADOLFO SUÁREZ AIRPORT, 30 MINUTES DRIVE

You can imagine how the decision came about. Big board room, lots of suits, yellow-pine furniture with deco detailing, water glasses. Santander is leaving Madrid. That it made perfect financial sense I am sure of. Sell off all the office spaces in central Madrid and move operations to the more affordable ‘burbs’ of Boadilla del Monte.

Uncharacteristically for The Art Pilgrim, I am including a terrible photo taken from my taxi as we drove up to the new Santander City 30 minutes from central Madrid. From a distance, it looks like a spaceship landed in a deserted landscape. On arriving, alien is exactly how it feels. Fully equipped with all that an employee might need, on the grounds one can find a hospital, restaurants, a golf course, day care, a gym, and much more. But it does feel like a corporate city. The solution for the soullessness? Art! of course. And a forest of ancient olive trees.

There are a few works from the collection is dotted around the grounds, with a Richard Serra sculpture placed in the middle of a roundabout to admire from the car on arrival (I would have preferred to be able to walk up to it). There is also a great Julian Opie in the reception area, with a custom red ground to better resemble the company logo. The bulk of the collection is housed in a purpose-built post-modernist’s dream. The collection doesn’t have a discernible focus, with a large coin collection on display at the entrance, Spanish medieval to contemporary art, with a speckle of 16th -18th century European works. The contemporary works are also a bit of a mix.

As part of their mission statement, the foundation aims to make the collection as available as possible, so the works are often on loan. What is good about this is that it frees up the galleries for visiting exhibitions, often of private collections that are, I suspect, of the Bank’s clients.

It is a pain to arrive to Santander City but they do have a free shuttle from Madrid that one needs to book in advance. Entry is also free but you need to register with an ID at reception. Why go? It is a curiosity to see this new way of working and living. The collection is nice and the temporary exhibitions are also quite good. If you are in Madrid for ARCO, then it should certainly be on your list of things to do but only after you have visited the inner city museums and galleries.