Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art

The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, popularly known as MACBA, is located in the Raval district of Barcelona. It was inaugurated in 1995 in the building of the House of Charity. Its origins date back to 1959, when the art critic Alexandre Cirici Pellicer together with Cesareo Rodriguez Aguilera headed a group of people who believed the city needed a museum of this kind and actively began to gather the collection of works which provided a basis for the future foundation of the museum. However, not until 1985, Joan Rigol, the then Minister of Culture of the Generalitat, took up this idea, which a year later was approved by the mayor of Barcelona Pasqual Maragall, who entrusted the project to the American architect Richard Meier.

The museum is located in the modernist building composed of straight lines and curves, which together form a structure allowing the natural light to get through the windows into the main atrium, thus generating space. The atrium is designed in such a way that it filters and distributes light into the different parts of the building. The dominant colour of the building is white.

Other buildings adjacent to the museum are the building of the Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona and the Convent of the Angels (Convent dels Angels), which originally was home to Dominican nuns and today is used as a theatre as well as an exhibition and concert hall.