Dissemination

The Manual is a tool that gives visitors insights into the museum from a number of perspectives. It aims to provide keys that make it possible to understand the issues the MACBA talks about and the aspects that define it, thereby ensuring it is accessible to everyone.

The publication The MACBA Collection. Selected works presents 193 prominent works from the museum’s holdings. The MACBA Collection, shaped by the various directors and curatorial teams, and characterised by its international vision, brings together specialised works and documents dating from the middle of the last century up until the present day.

By means of a critical essay and an interview with Muntadas, Anne Bénichou, the editor of this publication, reveals how the artist’s working process is more archaeological than documentary in its approach. The emphasis is not so much on what is said or on who says it, but on allowing the public to use this space to construct their own narratives.

In his essay, Lars Bang Larsen analyses the utopia of a self-organized society that aimed to encourage personal freedom and collaboration between individuals. The documentation of this work forms part of the MACBA Collection.

If any one thing could be said to define MACBA between 2002 and 2007, it would be its political position and its commitment to questioning institutional discursive devices. This volume presents a selection of the works incorporated into the Museum’s Collection during that period, and reflects on the fundaments of what has come to be called ‘the MACBA model’.

Any art collection that seeks to be truly contemporary must remain open to an array of different readings rather than being guided by an accumulative or encyclopaedic intent. Based on this idea, in 2002 MACBA embarked on a re-reading of its collection that sought to revise the bourgeois, teleological and progressive nature of the art history that had influenced a large part of European art collecting.