New MNAC

The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, founded in 1934 by its first director Joaquim Folch i Torres, has experienced a turbulent history, marked by major events such as the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime. These disruptions have so far prevented the Museum from realising its original vision: a national art museum that permanently showcases Catalonia’s artistic creation, unrestricted by period, and accessible to all under the best possible conditions.

An undertaking of this scale and significance for Catalan culture – and for the country as a whole – can only come to fruition when political consensus, institutional maturity and the right moment align. That moment has now arrived.

In the present moment, more than ever, it is vital to reaffirm that art and culture are essential tools for understanding the human condition. They offer a rigorous and critical perspective through which to deepen our understanding of the world, of life and of the choices we face today.

While the extension will take shape in Barcelona, its scope is national. As an institution of strong symbolic significance, the Museum assumes responsibility for representing artistic creation across the whole of Catalonia, in all its breadth, beyond the capital. A core mission of the MNAC is to bring together the most comprehensive possible representation of Catalan art across its history and to make it accessible to all.

The extension will place artists firmly at the heart of the Museum, where they rightly belong, in what is ultimately their home. The Museum is a living institution that, regardless of the chronology of its collections, exists in a continuous present. Living artists, in particular, play a vital role in shaping it as a space for dialogue and contemporary creation, bringing critical insight and constant reinterpretation. Artists work within the Museum and help shape its future collections, and it is the institution’s responsibility to support, validate and protect their work.

The Museum is actively engaged in the major debates shaping leading cultural institutions today, both in Europe and internationally, and plays a central role in the profound transformation museums have been undergoing in recent years.

The Museum exists for people – for society as a whole. Its public service mission must underpin the entire project. The extension is justified insofar as it strengthens the Museum’s capacity to create diverse contexts for experience, interpretation and engagement that respond to real needs and ensure the effective exercise of cultural rights.

The MNAC holds the country’s most extensive art collection, a unique resource for collective memory, for reflecting on the present and for shaping the future of Catalan art. Its collection is significant not only for Catalonia but also on a European and international scale. Universally important works, such as Romanesque and modernista art, among others, place the Museum firmly on the map of leading cultural institutions worldwide.

By its very nature, the extension project is collaborative and plural. The teams driving it extend beyond the institution itself, drawing on external expertise and reflecting an intergenerational approach that mirrors the complexity of the moment.

Sustainability is a central and cross-cutting principle of the extension project, set against a backdrop of climate emergency that demands the highest standards of responsibility from public institutions. The Museum treats this commitment not as an add-on, but as a structural principle guiding every decision.