MACBA: the museum where difficult art awakens you (and the archive-library that almost no one knows about)

Qué es MACBA — Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona y de dónde viene

MACBA opened in 1995, after fifteen years of project. Richard Meier's building — white, geometric, almost clinical — was an urban manifesto: building a beacon of modernity in the heart of Raval, the historically poorest and most problematic neighborhood in Barcelona. The plan only half worked. The Raval gentrified around the MACBA, but the neighborhood is still the Raval. The permanent collection covers Spanish and international art from the 1940s to today. Programming with serious curation — a lot of research, a lot of rehearsal. And since 1995, the outdoor patio is the place where Barcelona skaters have been making free performative art every afternoon.

Why go — and what's the purpose of your appointment with the artist?

The MACBA is a test. There is contemporary art that will bore you, irritate you, leave you indifferent. That's exactly the point. Creative block is often born from only looking at affirming art. The MACBA confronts you with art that bothers you — and in that discomfort the questions that comfortable art cannot ask you are opened.

How to take advantage of it (concrete practice)

Here's the secret that almost no one knows: go down to the library-file on floor -1. It is one of the best kept secrets in the city: there are all the exhibition catalogs from the last 30 years, open to the public for free. Spend an afternoon reading catalogs. You are going to discover artists that you didn't know existed, movements that changed your sector, ideas that you had been looking for for months. Then, go out to the patio and watch the skaters for 20 minutes — it's the best practical class on repeating the same gesture until it comes out that exists in Barcelona.

Why this place connects with Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way

The practice of the appointment with the artist that Julia Cameron prescribes in The Artist's Path has a principle: creativity needs to be fed before I can produce. Cameron calls it 'filling the well.' The metaphor is exact: if it doesn't rain, the well runs dry. If you don't expose your brain to non-work stimuli once a week, your ability to generate new ideas quietly declines, week by week.

MACBA — Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona es un sitio ideal para una cita con el artista porque cumple las tres condiciones que Cameron pide: It takes you out of your routine (a place other than your work and home), does not require production (you are going to receive, not create), and exposes you to curated stimuli (someone with judgment decided this was worth watching). Three conditions, an hour or two, once a week. It is probably the practice with the best mental ROI that you are going to add to your routine.

If you haven't taken the course yet, this is the place to start. Your Artist's Path is the free 12-week program that applies Julia Cameron's method to your life — including two hours a week blocked off on your calendar for appointments like this. More about the course at the end of the post.