The Board of Trustees of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, made up of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona City Council, the Ministry of Culture and representatives of civil society of recognised prestige in the field of culture and patronage, decided unanimously on June 21 to give the green light to the competition that will be announced on Monday and that will allow the preliminary architectural project to be awarded for the extension of the Museum to the Victòria Eugènia Pavilion.

 

The MNAC’s expansion involves the rehabilitation and heritage recovery of the Victòria Eugènia Pavilion, the work of the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, as well as the reorganisation of certain spaces in the current headquarters of the Museum in the Palau Nacional and a connection made between the two buildings. The result will be a single museum with two perfectly connected buildings that will allow it to take on and carry out its heritage, artistic and public service missions in a permanent, extensive way and with the ambition and impact of an international institution of reference.

 

Of the 9,000 m2 of useful exhibition space it currently has, the museum will eventually have 19,500 m2 between the two buildings. This means that for the first time it will possible for the new MNAC to accommodate, extensively and without chronological limits, the artists of the second half of the 20th century, and display the wide range of the collection of photography and popular arts such as comics and illustration. It will also make it possible to have exhibition spaces with the dimensions, versatility and characteristics necessary to carry out a complex, diverse and far-reaching exhibition programme, as well as having the ability to fully develop the educational and social dimension of the Museum.

 

On the other hand, the expansion will also allow the new challenges and missions of the 21st century that the MNAC has already been developing in recent years to be met. These are the result of the accelerated transformation processes that museums are experiencing everywhere and in which the Museum can become a benchmark: representativeness, diversity, inclusion and the revision and reformulation of hegemonic and dominant narratives among many others. It will also therefore allow us to respond to the needs of the communities we are related to, addressing the relevant problems of the society they encounter. 

 

The final project can expect to be inaugurated in 2029 as part of the commemoration of the 100 years of the International Exhibition of 1929. It will mark the completion of the country’s great art museum, conceived by Joaquim Folch i Torres in 1934, the year of its foundation.

 

 

The budget allocated to the preliminary architectural project of the new museum is €1,077,156.19 + VAT. The competition, which will make it possible to award the preliminary project, will take place in two rounds and the presentation of proposals will be made anonymously. The first round’s presentation deadline is the end of October, and the second round is expected to take place from the end of December to the beginning of February 2025.

 

The jury, formed by representatives of the three administrations, the Museum and the COAC, will select five technical proposals based on the established evaluation criteria, which will be developed in a remunerated manner in the second round. The awarding of the contract of the winning proposal is scheduled for the end of March 2025.

 

The expansion and reorganisation of the spaces, as well as the improvement of access and the greater proximity to the urban network, will make it possible, in essence, for the country and the city’s art museum of reference to respond to the large number of demands that the different communities and agents of society and the cultural sector raise. It will reinforce and increase its essential condition of public service and achieve the tools and spaces necessary to consolidate and strengthen its dimension as a great museum, typical of a European capital, and at the service of the country.