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► Hard Gelatin. Hidden Stories from the 80s is a revision of the hegemonic account of the period between 1977 and 1992 in Spain, questioned from today’s perspective.

► Over 200 works – half of them from the MACBA Collection – by around sixty artists, together with a large selection of material from the Museum’s Archive and Library Fonds.

► The exhibition is part of a project by L’Internationale, a network of European museums, which invited its members to propose a critical revision of the eighties within their own context.


Title: Hard Gelatin. Hidden Stories from the 80s Opening: Thursday 3 November 2016, 7.30 pm Dates: 4 November 2016 to 19 March 2017 Organisation: Exhibition organised by MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona as part of L’Internationale Curator: Teresa Grandas


The Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona presents Hard Gelatin. Hidden Stories from the 80s, a revision of the hegemonic account of the period between 1977 and 1992 in Spain, questioned from today’s perspective. It looks at a series of social, political and economic events in the history of that period, while presenting the work of a number of groups, cultural activists and artists who adopted subversion and a critical refutation of the established order. The project has been developed as part of L’Internationale, a network of six European museums, which invited its members to propose a critical revision of the eighties within their own context.

The exhibition brings to the fore some of the hidden stories by asking questions and challenging the official narrative and dominant discourses. It is structured around seven possible accounts: Forgotten memory, on anti-history, counter-information and the omission of the recent past; Blind spots, from autonomous groups to democratic institutionalisation; From blue overalls to white collars, from the dismantling of workers’ movements to industrial restructuring; In the neighbourhood of my dreams, from real estate to the city as spectacle; Beautiful losers, on drugs and prisons; Stolen words, counterculture versus the art institution; and Gaseous state, on otherness and escapism as a weapon, the imaginary world. Hard Gelatin brings together over 200 works by 59 artists, half of them from the MACBA Collection, together with a large selection of material from the Museum’s Archive and Library Fonds. Also included are films, documentaries, TV programmes, magazines, comics, fanzines, artworks and anti-artistic exercises, among other materials.

► This is the first presentation of the work made by Antoni Miralda in the United States, from 1972 until the late nineties.

► Curated by Vicent Todolí, the exhibition recreates the installations and collective projects in which Miralda delves into rituals and ceremonies and their symbolism, such as Honeymoon Project, Wheat & Steak and Movable Feast, among many others.

► Every Friday and Saturday evening, the work El Internacional Tapas Bar & Restaurant will be activated. An experiment integrating cooking and art, this was the first tapas bar in the United States and an icon of Manhattan’s neighbourhood of Tribeca.

► Santa Comida, a key work in the MACBA Collection, will be recreated at the Capella. Visitors are invited to enrich the installation by making their own offering. It includes a carpet made with African fabrics that was presented at the Expo 2000 in Hannover.

Title: MIRALDA MADEINUSA Opening: Friday 21 October 2016, 7.30 pm Dates: 22 October 2016 – 9 April 2017 Production: MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona Curator: Vicent Todolí

‘The art of sampling becomes a metaphor for the experience of aesthetic consumerism’, said Vicent Todolí, curator of MIRALDA MADEINUSA, in 1984. The exhibition presents all the American projects of the artist Antoni Miralda (Terrassa, 1942), seen here together for the first time. It recreates fifteen of the works made in the United States, manifesting the artist’s interest in coexistence in the public space, the ephemeral, a critical and poetic spirit, and humour, to create a body of work that turns an act as universal as eating into a creative universe.

When Miralda arrived in the United States in 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War, the country was experiencing a period of great upheaval, with all kinds of social and political movements challenging the system. The discovery of American culture, then at its most creative, with its air of freedom and the feeling that anything was possible, acted as a catalyst in Miralda’s universe. Taking food as material for his work, he began to create collective and social projects in which he delved into rituals and ceremonies and their symbolism. Based on the artist’s own personal archive, the exhibition reconstructs some of the key installations from that time, shown in chronological order from the early seventies to the late nineties. Also included is a wide selection of materials explaining the genesis of his work, comprising audiovisual recordings of actions and events, drawings, sketches, photographs and various documentary materials, most of which are presented here for the first time.

MIRALDA MADEINUSA features the following projects: Sangría 228 West B’Way, Edible Landscape, Food Situation for a Patriotic Banquet, The Seattle Banquet, Food Demonstration, Movable Feast, Red Die #2, Labor Day Festa, Breadline, Wheat & Steak, Miami Projects, Santa Comida, El Internacional Tapas Bar & Restaurant, Honeymoon Project and Bigfish Mayaimi.

► La visita virtual ofrece un nutrido repertorio de contenidos digitales (vídeos, áudios y textos) para acercarse, desde cualquier lugar o in situ, a la muestra Colección MACBA 31

► La App MACBA, gratuita para iOs y Android, incluye más de 40 textos de obras, pistas de audio, entrevistas y vídeos seleccionados

► El MACBA a través: ocultos tras el escáner de iconos en forma de ojo, unos videos ocultos ofrecen una visita paralela a los visitantes donde pueden observar la actividad del museo a través de las paredes

► Las salas del MACBA ofrecen acceso a internet gratuito para todos los visitantes

Explorar la instalación multisensorial del artista brasileño Cildo Meireles, deambular por entre las 101 fotografías de Han-Peter Feldman… desde cualquier parte del mundo. Éstas son solo algunas de las posibilidades que la nueva visita virtual que el Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona ofrece para sumergirse en las obras de Colección MACBA 31. Un nuevo recurso al alcance de aquellos que no pueden desplazarse hasta el museo y, también, para quienes quieran preparar su visita o completar la experiencia vivida en salas. Un recorrido con vistas en 360º que cuenta con un nutrido repertorio de contenidos digitales como vídeos, audios y textos.

La actualización de la App del MACBA, gratuita para iOs y Android, además de incluir la información básica de acceso al museo, las exposiciones y actividades, recoge todos estos contenidos y se encuentran disponibles durante la visita a salas. Pistas de audio en las que escuchar a los propios artistas, entrevistas y videos seleccionados son algunos de los recursos que pone a disposición del usuario. También, la App propone descubrir el MACBA a través de las paredes. Se trata de una visita paralela en la que desbloqueando vídeos ocultos tras el escáner de siete iconos en forma de ojo dispersos por la arquitectura del edificio de Richard Meier. Donde parece que no hay nada, se muestra un mundo paralelo y lo que ocurre en el museo durante las 24 horas del día / 365 días al año.

► Con motivo de la exposición Miserachs Barcelona, presentada en el MACBA del 18 de septiembre de 2015 al 27 de marzo de 2016, la editorial RM Verlag y el museo coeditaron este libro diseñado por Ramon Pez y Laia Abril

► Este premio, de carácter único y periodicidad anual, está dotado con 3.000 euros y premia la calidad en la edición de libros de arte

► Esta publicación ha sido asimismo seleccionada el 2016 para PhotoEspaña, el Prix du Livre dels Rencontres d’Arles y el Kassel Fotobookfestival, donde fue nominado por el editor Markus Schaden.

Lunes, 10 octubre de 2016 El libro Miserachs Barcelona, del Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona y de la editorial RM Verlag, ha ganado el Premio Lázaro Galdiano, un galardón instituido por Gobierno de Navarra que reconoce la calidad en la edición de libros de arte. Se trata de una edición portfolio en la que se propone un recorrido inédito de la mano del comisario de la exposición Horacio Fernández a partir de 84 imágenes de las 371 que conforman el libro original de Xavier Miserachs, Barcelona, blanc i negre (publicado por Aymà el 1964).

Ésta es la quinta convocatoria del premio que rinde tributo a José Lázaro Galdiano, editor y bibliófico, fundador y director de la editorial y revista La España Moderna, y al que han concurrido un total de 33 volúmenes. El jurado ha estado presidido por Pello Pellejero Goñi, director general de Comunicación y Relaciones Institucionales del Gobierno de Navarra y han formado parte de él Elena Hernando Gonzalo, directora del Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Juan Antonio Yeves Andrés, jefe de la Biblioteca, Germán Bezunartea Oroz, alcalde de Beire, Alberto Anaut González, director de la editorial La Fábrica y Ricardo Pita Macaya, jefe de la Sección de Publicaciones del Gobierno de Navarra. El premio se ha fallado esta mañana en el Museo Lázaro Galdiano de Madrid.

Link to download the photos of the team.

►Tanya Barson, Chief Curator; Pablo Martínez, Head of Programming; and Josep M. Carreté, Chief Executive Officer, have already joined MACBA’s team.

►A new Assessing Committee has been formed, comprised of Catherine David, Chris Dercon, Estrella de Diego and Cuauhtémoc Medina.

►Now in its sixth edition, the Independent Study Programme has appointed new academic staff, including Lucía Egaña, Marcelo Expósito, Marina Garcés, Dora García, Emilio Santiago Muíño and Jaime Vindel.

► Forthcoming exhibitions at MACBA include: MIRALDA MADEINUSA; Hard Gelatin; Akram Zaatari. Against Photography. An Annotated History of the Arab Image Foundation; Forensic Architecture and Poesia Brossa.

► In the coming year MACBA will have a similar budget to that of 2016 and will enjoy a healthy fiscal standing thanks to increased funding from the Ajuntament de Barcelona and the Generalitat de Catalunya. The Ministry of Culture’s contribution will remain the same as in 2016.

►The Museum and its Responsibilities will be the title of the next annual conference of CIMAM, International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, which will be held at MACBA in November 2016.

The Fundación Almela-Solsona commemorates its 15th anniversary with a new donation of works by Alberto Solsona (Barcelona, 1947 – Madrid, 1988) to the Collection of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. Over 40 works on paper and 187 drawings, seen here for the first time, join a previous donation of 14 paintings by the artist, made between 1968 and 1988.

The new donation by the Fundación Almela-Solsona to MACBA includes 36 works on paper and 7 notebooks with an additional 187 works. As part of the MACBA Collection, this will contribute to the knowledge of Alberto Solsona as an artist and give his pictorial legacy the place it deserves in the art world. According to the catalogue published on the 25th anniversary of his death, Solsona was an artist that ‘mutates from a raging Pop art close to critical psychedelia to an abstract space where matter has given way to the arabesque as an iconographic motif’. This second donation completes a panoramic view of this artist from Barcelona who spent most of his working life in Madrid.

The future Chief Executive Officer of the Museum has extensive experience in the heritage and museum sector, and is an expert in strategic planning.

Barcelona, 7 July 2016 – The open call to fill the position of Chief Executive Officer of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona has been resolved with the selection of museologist Josep Maria Carreté. His mission is to direct the Museum team and its resources with maximum effectiveness and efficiency of management, to ensure excellence, customer orientation and continuous improvement. With the appointment of Josep Maria Carreté, the director of MACBA, Ferran Barenblit, has completed his team. ‘The broad museological experience and innovative organisation skills of Josep Maria Carreté have been decisive in his selection and I am pleased to be able to have him as part of this new exciting stage we are developing,’ Barenblit says.
His appointment will be effective from 1 September, together with those of the new Chief Curator of MACBA, Tanya Barson, formerly Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, and the new Head of Programming, Pablo Martínez, formerly Head of Education and Public Activities at the CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid.

Since 2012, Josep Maria Carreté (1963) has been deputy managing director of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Prior to this position, MACBA’s new Chief Executive Officer was director general of the Fundació Pau Casals and director general of Cultural Heritage at the Media and Culture Department of the Generalitat de Catalunya. He has also been director of the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya (MAC), director of the Museu Nacional Arqueològic de Tarragona (MNAT), director of the Personal Services Department at the Ajuntament de Gavà, director general of the Institut Municipal de Gestió del Patrimoni Cultural i Natural de Gavà, among other positions. In addition to occasional teaching on masters and postgraduate courses at several universities, he has participated in numerous conferences and has been a consultant on various public and private institutions related to heritage and museums. He is the author and co-author of seven books and over 25 articles related to heritage and museum management.

Selection process
The post attracted 23 applications, 14 men and 9 women.

- The experimentation of the viewer, the experience of time and different forms of conflict are some of the itineraries proposed in this new presentation.

- MACBA Collection 31 includes 85 works by 50 artists from around the world. They are a sample of the twenty-year history of the MACBA Collection, which contains over 5,000 works.

- Key pieces from the Museum Collection dialogue with ten new acquisitions: almost a third of the works are exhibited for the first time.

- Hans Haacke, Piero Manzoni, Àngels Ribé, Muntadas, Cildo Meireles, Joan Jonas, Esther Ferrer, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Marcel Broodthaers, Octavi Comeron, Harun Farocki, Vito Acconci, Gordon Matta-Clark, Jordi Benito, Dan Graham and David Lamelas are some of the artists in the exhibition.

Title: MACBA Collection 31 #Experience #Time #Conflict Curators: Ferran Barenblit and Antònia Maria Perelló Opening: Thursday, 16 June 2016, 8 pm Exhibition: from 17 June 2016 to end of June 2017 Organisation: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).

With this exhibition of the MACBA Collection the Museum enters its third decade. In the last twenty years we have made thirty presentations under various titles. Currently holding 5,452 works, our public collection is among the most important to feature contemporary art in southern Europe and is able to function as a network reflecting multiple discourses. This time, the exhibition MACBA Collection 31 offers some artistic itineraries built around three main areas: experience, time and conflict. Based on these concepts, the works in the exhibition propose itineraries that question various forms of conflict in today’s world, the relation of art with itself, the sensory experimentation of the viewer, corporeality and the experience of time, among others. The exhibition includes 85 works by 50 artists of various generations from around the world, representing a chronological period of over five decades, from 1959 to 2014.

- An international trailblazer and the first podcast project in a Spanish art institution, RWM won the 2009 Museums and the Web Best of the Web Podcast Award.
- RWM offers an archive of over 600 audio files ranging from online radio to accidental archives and oral memory, accessible 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
- In the course of the last ten years, RWM has collaborated with leading international figures including John Baldessari, Allan Sekula, Georges Didi-Huberman, Juan Muñoz, Suely Rolnik, Graham Harman, Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, Amos Gitai, Chris Dercon, Kenneth Goldsmith, Muntadas, Seth Siegelaub, Donna Haraway, and many others.
- To celebrate this tenth anniversary, RWM and MACBA coordinator Anna Ramos will talk to gramophonic collector Anki Toner in a radio-beyond-radio experience that will take place at 7 pm on 26 May, at the MACBA atrium.

“Painting first became interesting when photography came in because it lost its responsibility somehow, and liberated painting so to speak. [...] And I believe it is exactly the same thing with radio art. I believe that radio art is art done with radio in a time where radio has lost its responsibility [for representing reality]”
Goodiepal in a conversation, 2014

The Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona celebrates the tenth anniversary of Ràdio Web MACBA. RWM, Spain’s first museum-based radio project, was founded in 2006 in order to experiment with the new podcast format, making it a world pioneer of its kind. Over the years, the museum’s activities have ensured a constant flow of artists, curators, philosophers and academics who have shared knowledge and discourses that belie hegemonic narratives and are not usually aired on conventional radio. The result is over 500 podcasts and many texts, essays, conversations, and transcripts that complement the audio material. In short, RWM is radio beyond radio: a sound laboratory that has produced over a thousand files, which users can access anytime, free of charge. With the support of MACBA, the radio project has thus organically grown into "accidental" archive. Ten years on, RWM has shed the formal limitations of podcasts and now accompanies its research with essays in text form. As Knut Auferman said at the Radio As Art symposium, this brings RWM into the realm of “filecasting” at the service of research. In this spirit, Ràdio Web MACBA embarks on its second decade.

Six months after the arrival of Ferran Barenblit as Director of MACBA, the Museum completes its contents team with the appointment of the Curator of International Art at Tate Modern and the Head of Education and Public Activities at CA2M.

Barcelona, 27 April 2016 – The process of the open call for the posts of Chief Curator and Head of Programming at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona has concluded with the appointment of Tanya Barson and Pablo Martínez. Ferran Barenblit, Director of MACBA since October 2015, completes his team with the incorporation of Tanya Barson as Chief Curator and Pablo Martínez as Head of Programming. Tanya Barson, former Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, will be in charge of the Collection, Exhibitions and Publications departments. Pablo Martínez, former Head of Education and Public Activities at CA2 Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, will be in charge of the MACBA Study Centre, Programme of Independent Studies (PEI), Public Programmes and Education.

They will join MACBA on 1 September 2016.

There were 29 candidates for the two posts: 12 men and 17 women, 14 of them from abroad.

Ferran Barenblit, Director of MACBA, in agreement with the Committee of Experts, has praised Tanya Barson for ‘her intellectual ambition, her longstanding experience at Tate Modern, one of the most important museums in the world, where she contributed to the development and presentation of the Collection; and her exhaustive knowledge of post-war art, with particular interest in non-hegemonic narratives in the transition between modernity and contemporaneity’. Regarding Pablo Martínez, with whom he worked in the creation of CA2M, Barenblit has emphasised ‘his critical reflection on museums based on public attitudes; his capacity for creating new formats of contact between art and the public; and his experience as a researcher, a key faculty for planning the future of the MACBA Study Centre and PEI’. In the words of Barenblit: ‘With these new appointments, together with MACBA’s team, the Museum will be ready to face the challenges ahead with a programme of excellence and rigour, and further explore its relation to the public and its international projection.’

The Committee of Experts was formed by: Isabel Balliu i Badia, Director of Resources and Acting Manager at the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona; Carles Sala Marzal, Director of Cultural Infrastructures, Heritage and Coordination at the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona; Ferran Barenblit, Director of MACBA; and Joan Abellà Barril, General Manager of MACBA.

TANYA BARSON (London, 1972) joined the Tate in 1997. Since 2007 she has been Curator of International Art at Tate Modern. Previously she was Curator of Exhibitions and the Collection at Tate Liverpool (2004–7).
She has curated solo exhibitions of Mira Schendel (2013), Ellen Gallagher (2007), Helio Oiticica (2007), Jake and Dinos Chapman (2006), Frida Kahlo (2005) and Assume Vivid Astro Focus (2005). Among the group exhibitions she has curated are Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic (2010), Inverting the Map: Latin American Art from the Tate Collection (2006) and the Turner Prize (2001). She was part of the organising team of Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915-2015 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (2015).
She has developed new formats of collaboration between Tate and Latin American organisations, projects such as Sala Siqueiros in Mexico City, MALI in Lima and TEOR/éTICA in San José de Costa Rica. She is currently preparing one of the inaugural exhibitions for the opening of Tate Modern’s new building in July, dedicated to Georgia O’Keeffe.

PABLO MARTÍNEZ (Valladolid, 1979) is an educator and researcher. Since 2009 he has been Head of Education and Public Activities at CA2M, where he innovated programmes such as PicNic Sessions, the Universidad Popular and Las Lindes, a research group on critical educational practices. Previously he had been Coordinator of Educational Programmes at the Museo Reina Sofía (2004–8) and Educator at the Museo Patio Herreriano. He was also Associate Professor of Contemporary Art at the Fine Arts Faculty of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2011–15).
He writes for art-agenda and is Editorial Secretary of the journal of art and visual culture Re-visiones. He is currently doing research on the funeral of Buenaventura Durruti, an investigation on the potential of images for constructing political subjectivity. He has done research residencies at Vrije University, Amsterdam (2014), Tate Britain (2008), and the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2007). Together with Vincent Meessen, he directed the 19th and 20th Image Study Days at the Comunidad de Madrid. He is co-editor, with Yayo Aznar, of Arte actual. Lecturas para un espectador inquieto and editor of the forthcoming No sabíamos lo que hacíamos. Lecturas sobre educación.