10 contemporary art museums in Barcelona you must visit
Looking for an art museum in Barcelona? With more than 70 different museums and exhibition spaces, everyone in this important cultural city can find something to his liking. The contemporary art lover will find museums in all shapes and sizes; from digital art to architecture and from pixel art to ornament design. An overview of, from our point of view, the 10 best contemporary art museums in Barcelona.
Fundacío Suñol is a private non-profit organization, which shows Josep Suñol’s contemporary art collection. With more than 1.200 works of art, of artists such as Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Antoni Tàpies, Man Ray and Alighiero Boetti, the foundation manages a private collection of the most important contemporary artists in Spain.
MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani Barcelona
MACBA is an open institution with contemporary art as the main dissemination. The building of the museum was designed by the American artist and architect Richard Meier. The museum contains works of, among others, Marcel Duchamp, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Miró, Rineke Dijkstra, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. The museum organizes a new exhibition every three to four months.
The Fundació Antoni Tàpies is a museum and cultural center in Barcelona. It is mainly dedicated to the life and work of the Catalan painter Antoni Tàpies. The foundation was founded by the painter himself in 1984. Tàpies himself donated more than 300 works by the painter, making it one of the most complete collections of the artist.
Centre d’Art Santa Mònica is a museum in Barcelona for temporary exhibitions, which mainly contains applied arts. The museum has a special focus on the culture around digital media that is produced in Catalonia and international artists and creators such as Núria Font and María Ruido find the possibility to present their works in the exhibition space.
Àngels Barcelona is an art gallery in Barcelona that focusses on the debate of contemporary culture and use of different artistic mediums and discourses. The gallery shows works of artists such as Pep Agut, Jeanno Gaussi, Lúa Coderch, Peter Downsbrough, Daniel G. Andújar, Ion Grigorescu, Mònica Planes and Harun Farocki.
Fundació Joan Miró is a museum of modern art, which was built according to the plans of architect Josep Lluís Sert and expanded in 1988 by Jaume Freixa. The collection comprises the almost complete graphic works of the Spanish artist Joan Miró and works of other modern artists, such as Alexander Calder, Mark Rothko and Marcel Duchamp.
La Virreina Centre de la Imatge
The Palau de la Virreina will awaken your curiosity, since its facade, very decorated, and its interior courtyards and staircases, allow you to glimpse wealth and power. The Baroque building is the current headquarters of the Barcelona Institute of Culture and hosts several temporary exhibitions and cultural events with artists such as Lorenza Böttner, Natalie Bookchin and Ignasi de Solà-Morales.
CCCB: Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
CCCB is a contemporary art museum in the district el Raval, located in Barcelona. The central theme of the museum is “the city and its culture”. The exhibition shows works (photographs, paintings, sculptures) from around the world, of artists such as Rudolf Steiner, Stanley Kubrick, Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman and Antoni Tàpies.
El Pabellón – Fundació Mies van der Rohe
The Barcelona Pavilion is a famous building, designed by the German Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich for the Barcelona International Exhibition in 1929. After the world’s fair, the building was demolished and rebuilt in the 1980s by a group of Spanish architects. Nowadays, the Mies van der Rohe Foundation regularly organizes traveling exhibitions.
Fabra i Coats supports artistic creation and has workspaces for performing arts, music and sound research, plastic and visual arts, multimedia creation or audio-visual creation. The gallery shows works of artists such as Raül Refree, Isaki Lacuesta, Silvia Campidelli and Luna Coppola.
