The MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona is an international flagship for raising awareness of contemporary art and cultural practices. It is a platform for encounters and experimentation that focuses on recent history: since it opened its doors twenty-five years ago, it has established itself as a preeminent centre thanks to its own singular and often innovative museological praxis, consolidating its position as a space for controversy and debate.
The MACBA is a nexus for the leading voices and movements of our times, achieving a balanced tension between its institutional role and its commitment to critique and transformation.
As a public entity, MACBA assumes responsibility for disseminating contemporary art, offering a diverse range of visions, and generating critical debates on art and culture, while aspiring to reach increasingly diverse audiences. MACBA is an open institution where citizens can find a space of public representation, and also one that prioritises education and innovation in its field. In addition to its commitment to heritage preservation and networking with other institutions, such activities place MACBA at the forefront of the art system in Catalonia and confirm Barcelona’s position as a world art capital, and an international benchmark.
The MACBA is managed by a consortium created in 1988. Its current members are the Government of Catalonia, Barcelona City Council, the Spanish Ministry of Culture and the MACBA Foundation. In 1995, MACBA officially opened its headquarters in the heart of the Raval, in a new building designed by the North American architect Richard Meier. Since them, the museum has continued to break new ground in the diffusion of contemporary art and cultural practices, and its impact has helped to confirm Barcelona’s reputation as a city of innovation.
