Things to do in Barcelona, Catalonia: The Best Art Museums

Based in the center of Barcelona, this unique and multi-purpose place gives you the opportunity to make original events. Art is all you need to get inspired and stimulate your senses. Positive vibes only!

Fantastic exhibition of marine photographs is now on!

Gallery Ex Machina, meaning "gallery from the machine", draws references from Steampunk and Cyberpunk elements. With the participation of artists around the world, the gallery exhibits paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures (and much more), exploring the intriguing, inevitable, and inextricably complex relationship between humans and technology.

The Fundació Joan Miró was created by Miró himself, at first principally with works from his own private collection, with a desire to set up an internationally recognised centre in Barcelona for Miró scholarship and contemporary art research, and to disseminate the collection. The Fundació opened to the public on 10 June 1975 and has since become a dynamic centre in which Joan Miró's work coexists with cutting-edge contemporary art. With an interdisciplinary approach, the Fundació organises temporary exhibitions of 20th and 21st century artists as well as academic activities and projects in collaboration with other institutions and organisations. Through its exhibition and educational programmes, the Fundació Joan Miró explores lines of research linked to the work of Miró and to contemporary art. The Fundació is located in a building designed by Josep Lluís Sert, making it one of the few museums anywhere in the world in which the complicity between artist and architect underpins the dialogue between the works and the space that houses them. The Fundació offers an overview of the landscapes of Joan Miró's art and life, creating an enriching dialogue with other artists from the 20th and 21st centuries.

Casa Vicens is the first masterpiece of Antoni Gaudi and sowed the seeds of later works. Built between 1883 and 1885 as a summer house for the Vicens family, here he showcased his unparalleled talent. Declared Unesco World Heritage in 2005.

Can Framis is the latest Fundació Vila Casas museum. Opened in April 2009 in Barcelona, it has around 300 works on show dating from the 1960’s onwards by a wide range of artists born or living in Catalonia. Temporary exhibitions are held at the Can Framis Espai A0. Can Framis, a factory built at the end of the 18th century, was originally owned by the Framis family. Over the years it fell into disuse, becoming a monument to the industry of the area. Today, as a Museum of Contemporary Painting, it is an ideal place for the contemplation of art located in Poble Nou, now converted into the technological district of Barcelona and renamed 22@. The conversion of the building was undertaken by the BAAS architectural practice.

The Espais Volart, opened in 2002 and extended in 2017, host temporary exhibitions of work by contemporary Catalan artists featured in the collection. Located, on one hand, in the storage space of the modernista building Casa Antonia Puget, and on the other, on the ground floor of the Casa Felip, at numbers 20 and 22 on carrer Ausiàs Marc, the Espais Volart benefit from their setting of modernista architecture. With a total exhibition space of 1,600 square metres, the Espais Volart offer displays by some of the most notable artists of the contemporary Catalan scene, while the foundation also promotes less well-known artists in the hope they will be rediscovered and reinstated to the place they deserve in Catalan art history. Xavier Valls, Moisès Villèlia, Miguel Rasero, Joaquim Chancho and Mayte Vieta are just some of the artists who have featured at the Espais Volart, broadening and enriching the artistic scene of our country.