Charlotte Perriand, visionary and humanist architect, at the Fundació Joan Miró

BarcelonaThe architect and designer Charlotte Perriand (Paris, 1903-1999) is considered not only a pioneer but also a visionary creator who placed people at the heart of her work. A famous anecdote from her career tells of when she approached Le Corbusier to collaborate with him, to which he replied, "We don't embroider pillows here." Even so, he gave her a job as an interior designer and furniture designer, and neither Le Corbusier nor his cousin, the architect Pierre Jeanneret, managed to overshadow her. It was in that studio that Perriand met Josep Lluís Sert, and through him, she also met Joan Miró and other architects and artists associated with the French Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Another of the most remarkable episodes in Perriand's career is her 1932 journey by canoe, exploring nature, vernacular architecture, and the emerging architecture dedicated to tourism. These aspects will be explored in the major exhibition that the Joan Miró Foundation will dedicate to Perriand from October 2026 to February 2027. It will be her first retrospective in Spain and will be sponsored by the BBVA Foundation. Also on display will be her commissions for the French government and, for the first time, documents and pieces from her personal archive that reveal the depth of her collaborations with Sert, Miró, and other artists.

With this exhibition, and the upcoming reorganization of the permanent collection, which will open on March 13, architecture will be the central theme of the program, coinciding with Barcelona's designation as World Capital of Architecture and the second part of the Fundació Joan Miró's 50th anniversary celebrations. Regarding the permanent collection, the curators, Teresa Montaner and artist and researcher Marta Ricart, aim to "restore the original spirit with which Sert and Miró conceived the building: a space in which architecture and artwork form an organic, permeable, and luminous unity," according to the press release. Miró's working processes will be key: the new interpretation of the collection is based on a portfolio of Miró's work from the 1950s, containing images that explore the idea of space and time, which he titledCircleIn 2026, the Jardí dels Xiprers (Garden of the Cypress Trees) will open to the public, restoring natural light and a route that makes the building "a central part of Miró's heritage." The conservation and presentation of the collection is sponsored by the Vila Casas Foundation. Also featuring an architectural focus is the exhibition by the winner of the 2025 Joan Miró Prize, the French-Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwang (starting April 29). Kiwang is not an architect, but she investigates "the materiality, systems of exploitation, economic exchanges, and geological temporalities that shape our relationship with spaces." The exhibition will be conceived specifically for the Foundation and is sponsored by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and Cupra.