With a huge piece of paper and a bathtub, the American Bernie Peyton made a bear more than one meter in size that he showed off during the first exhibition of the Zaragoza Origami Museum School (EMOZ) held in December 2013.
Since then, hundreds of origami pieces have paraded through this center: from a life-size rhinoceros or hippopotamus by Frenchman Éric Joisel - the “master of origami” - to reproductions of dinosaurs, flowers, haute couture costumes, magicians and gnomes , ninja turtles, virgins and saints or the masks and paintings of Junior Fritz Jacquet, who has also exhibited at the Louvre.
“It is the most important museum dedicated to high-level origami in the world,” confirms its founder and director, Jorge Pardo. According to him, the museum's collection includes around 4,000 models by about 200 artists from 50 different countries.
“Due to quality and quantity, it cannot be compared with others,” he adds. This group also includes countries like China or Japan, cradles of this art, but where it is most popular in its traditional version. “The last five Japanese ambassadors in Spain have passed through here, and they have all been amazed,” says Pardo.
The germ of EMOZ must be found in the Zaragozano Origami Group, which in 2024 will celebrate 80 years of life. In the beginning, this group of people passionate about paper folds met at the historic Café Nike in the Aragonese capital, from where they moved in the 80s of the last century to the also well-known Café Levante.
Already entering the new millennium, the natural step to address these concerns was the creation of the museum, located from its beginnings in the Zaragoza History Center.
In this decade of life, its rooms have hosted 40 different exhibitions - it renews them every three months - which have attracted 235,000 visitors. The museum is above all very well received by tourists, who in the ranking by quality of Tripadvisor comments usually place it between the Pilar and the Monasterio de Piedra, two tourist icons in the province of Zaragoza.
However, his good work goes hand in hand with a history of precariousness that is now going through its darkest days. In these years, the center has not been able to attract private sponsors or public subsidies that would allow it to carry out its work comfortably. If the Zaragoza City Council does not approve a new agreement soon, they warn that next year they could close their doors.
“We have lived in a permanent state of crisis since we opened, because the current agreement requires us to pay a fee (1,500 euros per month) that we have not been able to cover from the beginning,” laments Pardo.
The current managers assure that they have been accumulating losses for years and that they have even had to put money out of their own pockets. At the time, an agreement was reached with the council to replace this cash fee with a payment in kind (workshops, talks, free visiting days...), but the museum assures that this situation cannot be delayed any longer. .
For this reason, they are asking for a new agreement that does not include the payment of any fees and has a budget item of 100,000 euros – “in terms of quality-price we have no rival,” says Pardo – that allows its viability to be guaranteed.
For now, the city council governed by the PP decided in October to extend the current agreement for another year and continue negotiating. In a recent plenary session it was determined that the new agreement should have its own budget, expand the exhibition space and eliminate the payment of the fee, a proposal that was approved by all groups except the popular one, which abstained. “That gives us a bad feeling. They are the ones who, in the end, must launch and execute the new agreement, and they are not eager to see it,” says Pardo.
While this proposal arrives, the center inaugurated last week a double exhibition with which to celebrate its ten years of life. On the one hand, a selection has been made of pieces that have participated in the 40 previous exhibitions organized so far. On the other hand, a selection of the recent work of the Madrid industrial designer Víctor Coeurjoly is presented, who already exhibited here ten years ago.
“We are living in a bittersweet moment,” says Pardo, for whom the recognition of the museum among tourists and its vast wardrobe, “which would allow us to open a museum anywhere else,” contrasts with the lack of institutional support. “It is very sad that on our tenth birthday we do not know if we will live another one,” he summarizes.
