This paper is for the session on “Hopeful imaginaries and practices”. Having in mind the location of the conference we enter in a site certainly crowded by tourists, the Cathedral of Mallorca, “La Seo”, seeking for such kind of imaginary but with a shift towards a masterpiece of contemporary art and to see how it leads to a longer journey from Mallorca to Geneve. So may wish the tourists, at least some ones, to visit another masterpiece by the same creator, Miquel Barcelò (b. 1957), a major Spanish artist. In Mallorca I refer to the intervention done by Barcelò in the Chapel of St. Peter (or of the Santíssimo) with a lush interpretation of the Miracle of the Bread and Fishes, according to Gospel of St John. Inaugurated in 2007, it includes a polychrome ceramic mural of 300 square meters, five stained-glass windows twelve feet tall and liturgical furniture. Like a second skin to cover the sacred space, a visual delight of wildlife, flowers and fruits that the artist, born in Mallorca, says he remembers from childhood. In Geneva, he created the huge, unparalleled ceiling of the Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room at the United Nations Office that was inaugurated in 2008 and already considered a new “Sistine Chapel” of the 21st century. Metaphorically, a ceiling for the World itself, symbolized by the United Nations, specially that room dedicated to a planetary governance and dialogue. Again, a creative grammar to reach another purpose of the “infinite”. Both cases, and the bridge between them, inspire a reflection on tourist experience with spiritual and civic dimensions, as well as on the needed knowability about the two artworks to extend the imaginary and follow such pathway of beauty, hope and soul from Mallorca to Geneve – be it by an imaginary journey. In this sense it is a presentation related to tourism education but also beyond tourism because it concerns the cultural citizenship for which tourism may be a way of transforming learning and empowerment by the accurate visual culture of our heritage, contemporary art and their crossroads. The perspective by which this paper belongs to the project European Iconographies for Cultural Literacy that I already a presented in the First International Conference Cultural Literacy in Europe (London, 2015)

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tourism,Miquel Barcelò,contemporary art,cultural heritage,cultural literacy