Madrid’s Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza to Open New Contemporary Art Space

Madrid’s Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (MNTB) will open a new space to house a significantly expanded 21st-century collection, following a donation of more than 180 contemporary works valued at approximately €16 million.

The museum’s new acquisitions—including works by Ernesto Neto, Sarah Morris and Olafur Eliasson—will take up residence in a previously disused publicly owned building, set to be refurbished by the Spanish state at a reported cost of €70 million. The space is slated to open in 2031.

Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Spain’s minster of culture, Ernest Urtasun, described the museum expansion as among Spain’s “largest cultural projects” in coming years, and “one of the most relevant cultural operations to be witnessed in Europe”.

“It’s a giant step to make a museum for the next generations,” he said. “A bigger, more open museum, to bring culture closer to citizens, because public museums belong to the public.

“I love to think about museums as huge palaces for the people, places filled with beauty and heritage, not reserved to only a lucky few, spaces that anyone can consider their own, and that is precisely what the project we’re presenting today is about.”

The new gallery will also hold a further collection of almost 180 contemporary works on long-term loan, valued at approximately €10 million. The museum’s artistic director, Guillermo Solana, placed the development within a years-long process that will strengthen the presence of contemporary art at the institution. 

According to Solana, MNTB’s leadership has been working since 2008 to add the work of living artists into its collection. This has now been made possible by incorporating a significant portion of the TBA21 collection, assembled across 20 years by Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, whose father founded the museum in 1992 to house his own private collection.

In a statement, Thyssen-Bornemisza said: “My father taught me that a collection is not a possession, but a conversation with the world; but a dialogue with the world, held only briefly, in trust.”

She described the works she has now passed to MNTB as a “living record of how the world sees itself now, through ecological thought, oceanic knowledge, Indigenous cosmologies, and political ecologies”. 

Among the works set to be permanently acquired by the gallery is Ernesto Neto’s BasnepuruTxanaYubé (2015), an installation in which the Brazilian artist created a communal, spiritual space including crocheted pieces and a chandelier. Also included is Sarah Morris’ Pools-Fountainbleau (Miami) (2002), executed in her classic gloss paint. Olfaur Eliasson’s Your uncertain shadow (colour) (2010) is an installation comprising coloured lamps and aluminum boxes that creates multiple shadows of viewers as they move through the piece.

In addition to housing new works, the renovated space, which was formerly the Madrid Ice and Automobile Palace, will “relieve congestion” in the museum’s current historic home at Villahermosa Palace. It will also host dedicated spaces for education, research, conservation, and public participation.

MNTB’s existing collection includes almost 1,000 paintings dating from the late 13th to the 20th century, including works by Caravaggio, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh and Georgia O’Keeffe. An international architectural competition to design the new space is slated to launch in early 2027.