The Miró Foundation celebrates 50 years with its doors open to the future

The Joan Miró Foundation, with the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya and other institutions, began its 50th anniversary celebrations this June, looking to a future where this institution will continue to be a local, national, and international benchmark for contemporary art.

It was on June 10, 1975 when the Foundation opened its doors to the public on Montjuïc, in an iconic building designed by architect Josep Lluís Sert.

The anniversary kicked off on June 11 with the opening of the exhibition Poetry has only just begun. 50 years of Miró, which showcases both the past and present of the cultural institution and will be open to visitors until April 6 of next year. The exhibition unfolds across seven areas where visitors can learn about the genesis of the foundation, as well as its early years and present, and concludes with artistic proposals created by four local artists based on the museum's archive collection.

The exhibition's title evokes a verse by Joan Maragall, a poet admired by the painter. Miró himself also wrote poetry, and in his desire "to assassinate painting," he applied lyrical poetry to his canvases. "I try to apply colors like words that form poems, like notes that form music," he said.

An anniversary "for the people of tomorrow"

With the motto For the people of tomorrowThe 50th anniversary of the Miró Foundation will be celebrated over the course of a year with the participation of the public—who were already able to get a first taste of it on Sunday with an open day—and various cultural stakeholders. It will feature highlights that will highlight the foundation's role as a living center dedicated to contemporary art, full of synergies with its surroundings, but also with the past, present, and future.

In the fall, the foundation will present the exhibition Miró and the United States, an intergenerational dialogue between Joan Miró and American artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, which will delve into his relationship with this country, key to the artist's international projection and evolution. The exhibition brings together an extraordinary selection of paintings, sculptures, prints, and archival material from American and European collections and is accompanied by a large-format publication with new contributions from renowned scholars.

Furthermore, in March 2026, the Joan Miró Foundation will present a new arrangement of its collection, allowing visitors to approach Joan Miró's work from a different perspective. This presentation, which will continue to occupy the exhibition spaces designed by Josep Lluís Sert, will not conform to formal or historicist criteria, but rather in accordance with the artist's working processes.

Finally, to mark its half-century of existence, the foundation will reopen the Jardí dels Xiprers next March, a space that until now had been closed to the public. The garden's original layout will be restored and integrated into the collection's exhibition layout, in accordance with Miró and Sert's conception in the original design for the Montjuïc building.