MACBA

MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona)

MACBA’s mission is to bring contemporary art to life, with a particular focus on Catalan contemporary art. Through research, knowledge generation, and dissemination, they aim to spark enjoyment and interest in contemporary art and culture, with a transformative impact on individuals and society. MACBA seeks to actively contribute to building a freer society with a strong critical spirit.

Their mission focuses on researching and disseminating today’s art to wide audiences, aiming to drive social transformation by empowering visitors and users through intense democratic, cultural, and educational experiences.

They understand the museum as a welcoming space, working from the concept of hospitality while remaining aware of the social tensions shaped by globalization. Seeing the social body as a destabilizing, critical, and poetic agent, they promote artistic practices that invite reflection, reject the obvious, and create new shared spaces — acting as a laboratory for new forms of citizenship.

They want to go beyond what is known or accepted as real and possible, to explore the realm of what could be. Through its activities, MACBA researches and builds both tangible and intangible heritage. This vision gives the museum a unique and distinctive character, further enriched by the ongoing exchange of knowledge with the public. All of this is driven by our clear and firm commitment to becoming a local, national, and international reference point at the forefront of artistic discourse and research on the present through art.

MACBA inherently embraces the ability to connect — linking different artistic expressions, from architecture and poetry to design, performance, visual arts, cinema, and music, while also connecting artists with audiences. They want to be a museum where multiple forms of connectivity are produced and strengthened, fostering cooperative ties and meaningful collaborations with diverse social actors, especially through education.

Education is a space where aesthetic experiences can shape perception, create new forms of political subjectivity, and turn individuals into agents capable of constructing meaning. They view education not as a merely instrumental tool, but as an emancipatory project that seeks new ways of generating knowledge. In this way, MACBA is equipped to activate long-term educational research projects, allowing the museum to lead the conversation around arts education both nationally and internationally, while also fostering connections with institutions around the world.