After celebrating the CCCB's thirtieth anniversary, it's the turn of its neighbor, Macba, in 2025. Although the official celebration will not take place until November 28, the exact day the museum opened its doors in 1995, the maturity of the facility will be evident sooner, with the start of the expansion works. After many comings and goings due to neighborhood rejection of the project, and some delays, the project hopes to begin work before the end of January. According to Macba manager Eduard Vicente, the final administrative procedures are being ironed out to begin work in the coming weeks.
With a global budget of 16.2 million euros, the works will have two phases. The first will consist of preparing the ground to erect the new building in front of the Convent dels Àngels. To do this, the foundation will have to be laid, so work will be done on the subsoil and the underground parking lot that Saba has beneath the square, as well as cleaning the area for its adaptation to the future tenant. This will involve demolishing one of the entrances to the parking lot, which will lose 25 spaces to build the new building. This access is located directly in front of the Macba Study and Documentation Center. In the first phase, the cube-shaped building next to the entrance of the Convent dels Àngels, where there are public toilets that will be relocated to the convent itself, will also be demolished.
This first chapter of the works will last 14 months and will involve an investment of 5.7 million euros. Simultaneously, Macba plans to finalize the pending details of the second phase of the works with the different administrations. This second phase will account for a large part of the expansion's outlay, with 10.5 million euros.
It will be here when the new building is constructed in front of the Convent dels Àngels, designed by the Sabadell architecture studio H Arquitectes and the Swiss Christ & Gantenbein. It will feature a gallery that will run from one side of the square to the other, allowing the interior of the museum to be seen from outside. It will also have a terrace-viewpoint, with benches and green areas, which will be open during museum hours. This will add 2,110 square meters of new rooms, gallery, storage, and facilities, allowing more artists from the collection to be displayed and more activities and educational programs to be offered, in addition to almost 350 square meters of terrace-viewpoint.
For the second phase of the works, it is expected to start with contracts before this summer, with the aim of being able to start the works at the end of the year. If forecasts are met, it will coincide for a few months with the end of the first phase. All actions are expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2027. The City Council will also act in the square, where shade areas and green spaces will be incorporated, and skaters will lose their prominence. The new square will also house the CAP Raval Nord in the building of the Capella de la Misericòrdia, where the Macba was originally intended to expand, but it was eventually discarded due to the mobilization of residents. Works on the new CAP, which will have an area of about 2,800 square meters, have already begun. The investment will be 12.3 million euros.
2025 Season
A start to the expansion works that will be combined with an exhibition program of a marked vindicative and decolonial character for the 30th anniversary. For the museum, it is an invitation to "turn our gaze towards what has remained on the margins or has been hidden." Starting in February, Carlos Motta will arrive with Plegarias de resistencia (Prayers of Resistance), the first major anthology dedicated to this Colombian artist by a European institution. The exhibition will review 25 years of his career in which he has addressed topics such as forced migration, political violence, queer issues, AIDS, and struggles for civil rights in Latin America and the Caribbean. In May, Coco Fusco will arrive, one of the most prominent artists in the critique of colonialism and the exploitation of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples with a work that moves between performance and video art.
Finally, the major temporary exhibition of 2025 will be Projecting a Black Planet. The Art and Culture of Pan-Africa, starting in November. As highlighted by the director of Macba and curator of the exhibition, Elvira Dyangani Ose, it is the first major international exhibition to analyze the cultural manifestations of Pan-Africanism from the 1920s to the present day. It will consist of almost 350 pieces by a hundred artists. First, it will be seen at the Art Institute of Chicago and then it will arrive in Barcelona, to later reach the Barbican in London and the Kanal Centre Pompidou in Brussels. In the case of Macba, it will explore the footprint of this movement in Catalonia, related to episodes such as the international brigades. The 30th anniversary will also be accompanied by an exhibition from the collection with works by Joan Ponç, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Esther Ferrer, Ocaña, Josefa Tolrà, and Tacita Dean.
Macba closed 2024 with more than 261,400 visitors, 4,000 more visitors than the previous year and the highest figure in the last five years. Local visitors represent 65% compared to 35% international visitors. For 2025, the budget is set at around 12.6 million euros. It is supported by 1.9 million euros of own resources and 10.7 million euros contributed by the Government, the Generalitat, the City Council, and the Macba Foundation.