In July 1926, one month after the death of Antoni Gaudí, Joaquim Folch i Torres, director general of the Barcelona Art Museums, proposed to create, in Gaudí's own studio, a museum to conserve and disseminate his work. The idea was backed in 1935 by a group of artists and intellectuals.
The burning of the studio in 1936 was an immense loss and, for the proposed museum, a change. The long process of collecting material related to the work and figure of Gaudí and recomposing plaster models from the remains began. The process had to allow the continuation of work on the church and the opening of a museum, inevitably different from the one conceived before 1936.
The Museum was inaugurated in 1961 in the semi-basement of the Passion facade. This original core, with the later extensions and refurbishments, is part of the present day Museum which, while not forgetting Gaudí's work as a whole, focuses the exhibition on the building work for the church.
The drawings, the period photographs, the liturgical furniture and the models —restored originals, replicas of originals and new ones— are outstanding. There is a famous reconstruction of the polyfunicular model of the church at Colònia Güell.
The current sculptors' studio, where Gaudí's original models are restored and reproduced on different scales to guarantee fidelity to the original project, and an audiovisual on the history and the present state of the construction of the church complete the visit to the Museum and make it more educational and easier to understand.
A global project to extend and renovate the museum is currently being designed with the twofold purpose of preserving the work and the spirit of Gaudí and bringing them closer to different interested audiences. His personal biography is considered important and has to conclude with a view of his tomb.
