BARCELONA.- MACBA opened its doors for the first time on 28 November 1995, giving the city of Barcelona its first public contemporary art museum, a milestone achieved thanks to the desire and drive of the artistic and cultural community and civil society. Thirty years later, the museum continues to support the need to generate new narratives, to make visible and accommodate other ways of understanding the world.

This celebration marks the arrival of the first major exhibition on Pan-African contemporary art to the Catalan capital and provides a new interpretation of the MACBA Collection that pays tribute to three decades of collective work and dialogue between artists, audiences and institutions. In short, the museum has conceived a special 30th anniversary programme of activities and exhibitions that will continue throughout the year.

MACBA Collection

At the heart of the anniversary year is the complete reimagining of the MACBA Collection. Presented under the title Like a Dance of Starlings: MACBA Collection, Thirty Years and Infinite Ways of Being, this new presentation disrupts linear, chronological narratives. It opts instead for a fluid and associative approach that mirrors the very nature of contemporary artistic practice.

The exhibition treats the Collection not as a fixed asset but as a living ecosystem—an “elastic and open zone” where key works from the past thirty years engage in new dialogues with recent acquisitions. This significant overhaul underscores MACBA's commitment to continuous re-evaluation and engagement with socio-political urgencies.

The exhibition presents works by featured artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Samuel Beckett, Vera Chaves Barcellos, Dias & Riedweg, Max de Esteban, Evru/Zush, Esther Ferrer, Peter Friedl, Sara Gibert, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Silvia Gubern, Richard Hamilton, Joan Jonas, William Kentridge, Joan Miró, Julia Montilla, Matt Mullican,Itziar Okariz, Dennis Oppenheim, Tony Oursler, Elena Paredes, Àngels Ribé, Amèlia Riera, Dieter Roth, Josep Maria de Sucre, Antoni Tàpies, Josefa Tolrà, Josep Uclés, Moisès Villèlia, among others.

Murmurs: Twelve Speculative Actions for Year Thirty

To celebrate the museum’s thirtieth anniversary, a programme of live arts, music and performance will be staged. Its aim is not to record the institutional memory of the museum, but to remember the yearnings and desires that led to its creation in 1995. Over twelve months, a series of proposals by Dora García, Lolo & Sosaku, ASIA, Esther Ferrer and others, will be deployed that revisit key episodes of the recent past. These are speculative gestures of reinterpretation that point out gaps, silences and blind spots in the dominant historiography.

Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Pan-Africa

The anniversary year also serves as a fulcrum, pointing towards MACBA's ambitious programming for 2026. The highlight of the calendar is the major exhibition Project a Black Planet, a monumental, unprecedented undertaking. It is the first major international exhibition to focus on the artistic practices and cultural manifestations of Pan-Africanism from the 1920s to the present day. The show delves into Pan-Africanism not merely as a political and social movement, but as a cultural imaginary. It seeks the brotherhood and freedom of Afro-descendant communities, promoting a sense of belonging and an alternative planetary epistemology.

The exhibition is an expansive research project, bringing together more than 500 objects produced across Africa, Europe, North America, and South America. The selection offers a rich confluence of popular creations, such as books, posters, and music, in dialogue with fine art works, including paintings, photographs, and video. It addresses key themes such as the origins of Pan-Africanism, the study of negritude as an aesthetic and affirmative framework, questions of representation, and the role of religious beliefs.

The show, curated by MACBA Director Elvira Dyangani Ose alongside Antawan I. Byrd, Adom Getachew, and Matthew S. Witkowsky, is a coproduction with the Art Institute of Chicago, in collaboration with the Barbican Centre (London) and KANAL Centre Pompidou (Brussels).