The Center for the Study and Promotion of the Work of Picasso was created in order to promote the study and research on Pablo Picasso’s works and its universal influence in modern and contemporary art, with an educational, academic, historiographic and scientific aim. The new Centre will contribute to enrich the MPM’s current offer, turning it into a live cultural centre where all types of visitors will be able to approach the artist’s oeuvre.

The three-storied Library has an area of 508 square meters, and its façade maintains the brick ornament sgraffito. The Library and Centre of Documentation will be particularly useful to researchers and academics of Picasso’s life and works. Among other services, it offers a reading room with special connections for lap-tops and access to the Internet. The Library’s holdings include the Bernardo Sofovich collection (850 titles on Picasso), the Spanish Contemporary Art Fund (12.000 documents) and the Temboury Fund (140 documents that comprise mainly the correspondence between Juan Temboury and Jaime Sabartés from 1953 to 1964, photographs and press cuttings). A further 1,600 documents (books, periodicals and DVDs) purchased by the MPM in the past two years are also available. The Library is equipped with state-of-the-art information technology tools, which are applied directly to the Museum’s knowledge management system.

The Department of Education has an area of 474 square meters in three storeys, and includes workshops, offices and a resource centre for teachers and educators. Taking as a starting point Picasso’s revolutionary contribution to twentieth century art, the Department offers a comprehensive set of activities that focus on the careful study of his works, as well as talks and conferences about them. The aim is to initiate general visitors in the development of their visual perception and communication skills, while also adding to the knowledge of those more learned in the world of art. The Department of Education therefore offers the opportunity to use perception, experience and intelligence to elaborate a meaning for the different expressions of creativity, thus setting the basis for the development of visual perception. The MPM has been advised by two renowned specialists in museum education, Philip Yenawine and Amelia Arenas, who organised the Department of Education of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The new workshops and teacher training courses are programmed to start in January 2005.

With an area of 426 square meters and capacity to hold 172 people, the Auditorium is a single 10.6 meter high room equipped for different uses, so as to allow a wide range of activities to take place. It is intended as a centre for cultural encounter and not only will it hold the MPM’s own proposals";" it will also welcome cultural, social and artistic initiatives originating from third parties. This will contribute to turn the MPM into an dynamic actor in Malaga’s cultural scene. Picasso’s tireless curiosity towards all kind of fields has set the pace for the planning of the events that will take place in this open forum starting in January 2005.

The administrative headquarters also lie in this area, occupying 788 square meters in two floors which will contain the ticket office and cloakroom for group visits and, as of next year, the Museum shop. The contemporary architecture of the new buildings thus coexist in respectful harmony with the restored 18th and 19th century buildings, standing in newly refurbished streets that have been instilled with new life.

The MPM’s complex design and the difficult adaptation of the group of buildings has been carried out by Gluckman Mayner Architects and Cámara/Martín Delgado Arquitectos, who have been capable of creating light open areas providing the perfect setting both for the contemplation of Picasso’s works and for the other facilities made available by the MPM.