MACBA – Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art

Plaça dels Àngels, 1 , Barcelona
Catalunya, Spain

Email: comunicacio@macba.cat
Phone: + 34 93 412 08 10
Website: https://www.macba.cat/en/

closed on: Tuesdays, January 1 and December 25
Museum Type: Art

MACBA museum Barcelona exterior ph. Riccardo Bianchini Inexhibit 2

The MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona is a modern art and contemporary art museum located in the heart of the capital city of Catalonia.

Cover image: view of the south facade of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) © Riccardo Bianchini / Inexhibit

Richard Meier’s building
Inaugurated in 1995, the building of the museum, designed by well-known American architect Richard Meyer, faces a very popular newly built public square, the Plaça dels Àngels, frequented by creative people, street artists, and skaters.

For the MACBA, Meyer designed a building shaped like a large box, clad in white enamel-painted steel panels, flanked by a circular pavilion on its west end, which accommodates the visitors’ entrance and service spaces, and a semi-detached wing on the east end, housing additional gallery spaces and staff offices. From the entrance, the public reaches the main galleries through a long ramped path adjacent to the main facade. The architect conceived most of the galleries, especially those on the upper floors, as spaces filled with daylight coming from an array of louvered skylights cut into the flat roof of the museum.

MACBA Barcelona, views of the south facade from Plaça dels Àngels. Photos © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

Axonometric view and ground floor plan of MACBA; images Richard Meier & Partners Architects

View of the main ramp and the entrance space of MACBA; photo Miriampoastor via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Collection and exhibitions
The permanent collection of the MACBA ranges from abstract art of the 1950s to pop art and conceptual art; it also includes a section specifically dedicated to photography and art from Spain and Latin America.

The collection features works by many world-renowned artists, such as Vito Acconci, Valerio Adami, Miguel Barceló, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joseph Beuys, Max Bill, Christian Boltanski, Alexander Calder, Cèsar, Guy Debord, Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Donald Judd, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Rebecca Horn, Anish Kapoor, Anselm Kiefer, Paul Klee, Jannis Kounellis, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Piero Manzoni, Mario Merz, Cildo Meireles, Joan Miró, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Mimmo Paladino, Eduardo Paolozzi, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Antoni Tàpies, Jeff Wall, and Andy Warhol, among others.

The MACBA organizes art workshops, educational programs, conferences, seminars, talks, and special exhibitions. The museum building is fully accessible to physically impaired people and includes a reference library, an archive, and a gift and bookstore.