Joan Miró Foundation unveils year-long celebration for 50th anniversary

The Joan Miró Foundation (Fundació Joan Miró) will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2025 with a special program featuring several exhibitions, with 'Exchanges: Miró and the United States' standing out as a key highlight.

This exhibition will present an intergenerational dialogue between Joan Miró and American artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

The 50th anniversary celebrations will begin on June 10, 2025, with the opening of the exhibition 'Painting the Sky: 50 years of Fundació Miró stories'.

In addition, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum will host a major retrospective of the Catalan artist from Mach 1 to July 6, 2025, titled 'Joan Miró'.

Open art center

"We want to acknowledge that we continue Joan Miró's vision, becoming an open and accessible art center for everyone," said Marko Daniel, the director of the Joan Miró Foundation, at the launch event on Wednesday in Barcelona.

"We are proud to celebrate our ongoing relationships with other institutions, companies, and individuals who help grow and expand the foundation's mission."

"We wish to commemorate our commitment to art and the community, emphasizing our ongoing dedication to emerging and pioneering cultural initiatives."

The 50th anniversary celebration will run from June 10, 2025, to June 10, 2026, under the slogan 'For the People of Tomorrow'. 

The program has been designed to strengthen the foundation's uniqueness and reaffirm the values that define the institution, according to artistic director Ana Ara.

Painting the Sky

The exhibition 'Painting the Sky: 50 years of Fundació Miró stories' will officially open the celebrations on June 10, 2025, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the museum's inauguration.

This exhibition will provide a narrative about the circumstances and the individuals who helped drive modernity in Catalonia, with a special focus on promoter Joan Prats, who played a key role in the creation of the Centre for Contemporary Art Studies (CEAC).

The exhibition will reflect on the shared desire of Miró, Prats, architect Josep Lluís Sert, and the Club 49 group to create a progressive and international cultural space in Barcelona.

Exchanges: Miró and the United States

'Exchanges: Miró and the United States' is set to be one of the main highlights of the 50th anniversary celebrations, an exhibition organized by the Joan Miró Foundation and The Phillips Collection (Washington DC).

This exhibition will shift the usual focus from France, placing the United States as central to Miró’s artistic evolution.

It will also highlight the importance of many female artists from that era.

The selection will feature around 160 works from American and European collections, as well as from the Joan Miró Foundation’s own collection.

The exhibition will include works by Miró alongside artists from various generations, such as Louise Bourgeois, Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Arshile Gorky, Alice Trumbull Mason, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.

Collection

The Joan Miró Foundation’s collection spans the entire artistic trajectory of Joan Miró, with more than seventy works.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary, three exhibitions have been designed: the first, 'Under the Layers of Miró: A Scientific Investigation', will provide a detailed look at the pigments the artist used and will open in April.

The second, 'Joan Miró: Gallery of Anti-Portraits', a selection of large-format prints and paintings from Miró’s later years, will be on view from July.

Finally, the exhibition 'Miró: Improvised Supports' will focus on the diverse materials the artist used to capture embryonic ideas, and it will be presented in the Opening the Archive exhibition space.

Other exhibitions

Other exhibitions will also be presented, such as 'Between Two Courtyards: The Work of Fina Miralles, Susana Solano, and Eva Lootz at Espai 10', curated by Martina Millà.

This exhibition honors three artists who exhibited at the foundation's Espai 10 gallery during the 1970s and 1980s. It will reconstruct their exhibitions: Landscapes (Fina Miralles, 1979), Sculptures and Drawings (Susana Solano, 1980), and Sands (Eva Lootz, 1986).

'New Talents in Asian Video Art' will present audiovisual works by Taiwanese artist Musquiqui Chihying and Indonesian artist Timoteus Anggawan Kusno, and the new cycle at Espai 13, 'From Here', curated by Carolina Jiménez, will explore the connections between creation and place, reflecting on concepts such as home, community, and belonging.

Podcast

To learn more about Joan Miró, the Catalan who painted the stars, listen to the podcast below, including an extended interview with Joan Miró Foundation director Marko Daniel.