Barcelona’s Museum of Contemporary Art is dedicated exclusively to the exhibition of works of art created during the second half of the twentieth century.
The idea for the creation of such museum came from Alexandre Cirici-Pellicier, a writer and art critic, who founded the Associació d’Artistes Actuales in 1953. This collective was formed by a group of artists, critics and art aficionados, who gathered to create an art collection, which was exhibited in various locations around the country. The collective dissolved in 1963 and the collection was stored at Biblioteca Museo Victor Balaguer.
This idea inspired the creation of a museum and on the 28th of November of 1995, MACBA was finally open to the public.
The 14.300m2 building was created by American architect Richard Meier, influenced by the works of Le Corbusier.
MACBA is one of Barcelona’s most important contemporary art museums. Its first floor features the museum’s permanent exhibit, with works by artists like Antoni Tàpies, Miquel Barceló and Joan Brossa. Though there are a large number of works by national artists, MACBA‘s collection also contains works by foreign artists like Eva Lootz, from Austria, Wolf Vostell, from Germany, and Teroushi Yoshida, from Japan.
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Over the years museum has presented and will continue presenting unique temporary exhibits, such as Desires and Necessities, Species of Spaces and Miserachs Barcelona.
MACBA organizes a series of activities for people of all ages. Experience MACBA shows the museum and contemporary art from another perspective; MACBA for Families is a weekend program that combines tours of the exhibition with workshops; Room 1418 is an active meeting point for visitors between 14 and 18 years that takes place every Saturday; and an Independent Studies Program that explores the field of the artistic practices that connect art to human sciences and to social, political and institutional intervention.
Besides the main building, there are two other constructions that are part of MACBA.
Convent dels Àngeles is a building that used to serve as a convent for the nuns of Tercera Orden de Santo Domingo. Today the building is used as the documentation center of the museum (Centre d’Estudis i Documentació) and the headquarters of Fomento de las Artes Decorativas.
The other building is La Capilla, the church of the former convent, which is now used as an exhibition space, having received works by artists like Latifa Echakhch and Armando Andrade Tudela.
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