Barcelona's contemporary art museum opens 'dynamic' exhibition

Barcelona's museum of contemporary art, Macba (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona), inaugurated a new permanent display from its collection on Wednesday.

The exhibition, ‘Un segle breu: Col·lecció Macba’ (A brief century: Macba Collection), takes up the whole first floor of the museum, where it will be open indefinitely, as the items on display are continually rotated.

The exhibition guides the visitor through a chronological journey, going back 20 years of acquisitions until the present day, with major works from the likes of Alexander Calder, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Miró, Jorge Oteiza, Antoni Tàpies and Joaquín Torres-García.

Exhibition is "central to our strategy"

“The permanent collection is central to our strategy; 30 years on, the museum is ready to tell this story,” said the gallery's director, Ferran Barenblit.

The new exhibition includes many of the collection's most emblematic works, displayed in relation to the most significant cultural and social moments of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Making the display “permanent” is “central” to the museum's future strategy, according to Barenblit, who described the exhibition as "always changing and dynamic."

From the emergence of modernity

The exhibition opens in 1929, and focuses on the rupture with artistic forms established at the start of the 20th century, providing "the possibility to show that first emergence of modernity," according to the director.

The display then advances towards the heart of the museum's collection, from the 1960s to the 1990s, as well as the first years of the 21st century.

In covering the end of the last century and the start of this one, Macba will show off a host of artworks from the major artists mentioned above, but also others, such as Eugènia Balcells, Guerrilla Girls, Juan Muñoz, Ewerker Collective, Sanja Ivekovic and Antoni Miralda.