Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art

The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (Catalan: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, IPA: [muˈzɛw ˈðart kuntəmpuˈɾani ðə βərsəˈɫonə]; abbreviated as MACBA) is situated in the Plaça dels Àngels, in El Raval, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The museum opened to the public on November 28, 1995. Previous directors were Daniel Giralt-Miracle (1988–1994), Miguel Molins (1995–1998), Manuel J. Borja-Villel (1998–2007), and Bartomeu Marí (2008-2015), while the current director, since 2015 is Ferran Barenblit.

In 1959, art critic Alexandre Cirici Pellicer formed a group of contemporary artists showing work in a series of 23 exhibitions with the hopes of beginning a collection for a new contemporary art museum in Barcelona. It was not until 1986 that the Barcelona City Council recommended the American architect Richard Meier & Partners (1987–1995) to design the museum. Art critics Francesc Miralles and Rosa Queralt were hired to write the museum’s mission statement. In 1987, the MACBA Foundation was created. In the following year the MACBA Foundation, in conjunction with the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Barcelona City Council, founded the MACBA Consortium in order further the process of the museum. The Consortium commissioned Meier later that year to build the museum. This was a controversial issue considering that the museum had no collection at the time of construction. The museum opened to the public in 1995, well after the 1992 Summer Olympics for which it was planned.

In 2014, the museum acquired an additional venue for its programming, comprising a converted 15th-century chapel and two large halls, a total of about 21,500 square feet, as well as the central Plaça dels Angels square. While MACBA has long used the chapel for performances and site-specific installations, this time the city lent the entire historic cluster to the institution for an unspecified term.

Meier embraced the difficult task of creating a building that would ultimately display a variety of contemporary artworks that were unknown to him at the time of design. The choice to build the museum in the Plaça dels Ángels is consistent with Meier’s vision to situate the building amongst some of Barcelona’s oldest streets and buildings, in addition to revamping the public space of the Raval.

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