The Arts

On the afternoon of our second day in Madrid, it had was planned that we should visit the Museo Reina Sofia, which is home to pieces Picasso and Dali, including the Guernica.  Upon arrival, we informed the students that they had to pick three pieces found within the exhibits and re-intact them using their own bodies. What surprised us the most was the immense size of the collection, leaving us unable to view the collection within the time we had. Although modern art can be hard to interpret the museum raised the question of how art reflected Spanish history, in comparison to the economic and physical history.

CosmoCaixa

Museums often involve feelings of dread. Science museums are often unbearably boring.

After being informed that we involuntarily had to visit a science museum during our stay in our trip, we were not amused. The thought of spending several hours confined in a building full of small school children swarming around the numerous displays and missing out on the beautiful sunshine, was painful. Despite the negative preconceptions, the museum turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

From learning about the various deathly diseases spread across the globe, to the evolution of planet Earth, to the numerous gadgets and scientific inventions, the museum surprisingly had a division appealing to everyone. Not only were we allowed to explore the different interactive displays; we were also given the opportunity to learn about Nano-science through a 3D hemispherical digital Planetarium.

Overall, the CosmoCaixa museum comprised of impressive exhibitions and displays that offered us new knowledge, which we could later bring to the classroom. 

TOK Classes outside the CosmoCaixa 

Temple vs. cathedral

We chose to go to two different locations. The Temple of Debod and the Almudena Cathedral. The reason for this choice was to look into the differences and similarities of two different religious sites. What is the significance in the major differences between the discreteness of the Egyptian temple in comparison to the vulgarious and flashy cathedral. There were many differences I'm regards of size and in that sense very few similarities. Many wondered how come the temple was so small when we know for a fact that the Egyptians had the resources and abilities to build huge monuments as a pyramid for an example. This might be because the Egyptians are more modest since the pyramids are also extremely simple but also the fact that this had been moved from Egypt to Spain and therefore we suggested that there could be the possibility of this being a smaller temple and that they might have huge temples around different locations in Egypt. 

A similarity between the two were the many depictions of their gods, Jesus in the case of the cathedral and different Egyptian gods in the temples case. 

                Cathedral Almudena 

                 Temple de Debod 

Study Trip to Madrid 2013

IB students NG

Introduction

Lecture on Modern Spain

History

Natural Science

Economics

The Arts

Religion

End remark