Let’s visit the transformation of the MACBA Collection: Prelude Poetic Intention

Antònia M. Perelló is Head of the Collection and Curator at the MACBA. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Barcelona and is currently a professor in the UIC’s official Master’s Degree in Arts and Cultural Management, where she teaches the Management and Curation of Exhibitions course.

From 1989 to 2008 she taught in the University of Barcelona’s Master’s Degree in Museology, and she regularly gives classes and lectures on collecting, exhibitions and museography at different universities. In 2015, she taught the inaugural lesson of the UIB Master’s Programme in Cultural Heritage, and in 2020 she was a guest lecturer for the Master’s Degree in Cultural Management at the University of Piura, Lima.

At the MACBA she has contributed to the definition, organisation, study and documentation of the Collection. She has curated MACBA exhibitions with successive directors; they include Time as Matter, Volume, Critical Episodes, A Short Century, and the MACBA Collection. Poetic intention in the museum itself, as well as The Shadow of Speech. The MACBA Collection at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, in Seoul (MMCA). She has also developed individual projects such as Introversions, Views (of the museum), Beyond the Object or Beneath the Surface, among others.

She was curator of the Barcelona City Council Exhibition Department, participating in projects such as the exhibition Barceló, Barcelona in the Antiga Casa de Caritat of Barcelona, and the international exhibitions Antoni Gaudí and Catalan Modernism in Nagoya, and Barcelona Creation and Contemporary Catalan Artists at the Modern Art Museum of Yokohama. She was also part of the team driving municipal projects such as the “Tallers Art Triangle” or “Barcelona Primavera del Disseny”.

Her research work is linked to modern-day architecture, museology and artistic contemporaneity. In addition to research articles, she has published books such as La Bauhaus (1990); Las claves de la arquitectura (2nd edition, 1994); Racionalismo y Bauhaus (1995); Art, arquitectura, museus (1996); Mirades (sobre el museu) (1996); Espaliú i la màscara (1997); Més enllà de l’objecte. Obres de la Col·lecció MACBA (2010); Gego. Esferes (2012); Ramon Guillen Balmes (2017) and, recently, Barcelona – París – Nova York (2021).

The exhibition and publication Doneu-vos la mà i pugeu a l’infern, presented at the MAC in Sabadell and at the Generalitat of Catalonia’s Blanquerna Cultural Center in Madrid, received the ACCA Research Award in 2017. Recently she curated the exhibition Panta Rei. Everything flows. Antoni Llena and Lucia C. Pino (2022) at the same venue.

She participates in juries, university tribunes and evaluation commissions, as well as professional associations. She has participated in numerous art congresses and round tables on art, collecting and museums. Outstanding among them are “New markets and commercial possibilities in contemporary art”, International Contemporary Art Experts Forum (ARCO); “Contemporary Collections. Perspectives on European collections”, CCA, University of Glasgow; “Rencontres Internationales: Paris-Berlin-Madrid”, Châtelet, Paris; “The Private-Public Collections. A Win-Win?”, Art Brussels Fair; “Coleccionismo privado. Un asunto pendiente”, Lázaro Galdiano Museum of Madrid; or “Colecciones públicas españolas de arte contemporáneo”, AGAS, Asociación de Galerías de Sevilla.

She led and took part in the round table held on the occasion of the museum’s 25th anniversary in 2020, which included participation by Ignasi Aballí and museum directors Miquel Molins and Ferran Barenblit. The artist donated his work “Enderroc”, produced in 1996 for the exhibition Views (of the museum), to the museum on this occasion.