MACBA - Study Center of Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona

The Study Center of Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) was created in December 2007 with the aim to generate and develop strong links between the production of exhibitions and the production of knowledge in relation to contemporary art. With the creation of the Study Center, MACBA broadened its field of action so as to include the preservation, research and dissemination of documents and ideas related to contemporary art practices, spanning art history but also other fields such as cultural studies, communication, philosophy, sociology, etc.

The Study Center holds approximately 70.000 publications and documents. According to preservation and consultation criteria, they have been distributed between the Research Collection, which preserves artist books and artist publications in general, historical ephemera, special magazines, and also collections of documents such as personal or gallery archives, and the Library Collection, which brings together secondary bibliography, exhibition catalogues, sound and audio recordings, periodicals, and documents in various audiovisual supports, including contemporary music recordings and scores.

While one of the Center’s primary objectives is to preserve the memory of contemporary artistic activity in the local context, no limits or geographic criteria have been set for the acquisition of new material. In terms of chronology, the Center’s holdings extend from World War II to the present, which is also the period encompassed by the artworks that make up the MACBA Collection.

Besides providing public access to the Research and Library Collections, the temporary exhibitions regularly held in the gallery of the Study Center present selections of documents mainly coming from the Center’s own holdings. And, in order to actively foster research, the Study Center has launched a Guest Researchers Program addressed to scholars specialising in contemporay artistic practices and artists.