Like a Dance of Starlings

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Photo courtesy of Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona

They fly in groups. Hundreds of thousands of birds moving in unison across the winter sky. Precisely choreographed, they twist and turn, swirl and swoop, forming vast pulsing swarms: the dance of the starlings. No one can predict what their next move will be—not even the birds themselves know where they will be flying in the next few seconds. The result is a perfectly synchronized aerial ballet. And it is with these unique aerial dances in mind that MACBA Collection has been designed in a twofold approach: celebrating its thirtieth anniversary while also reflecting on contemporary processes of subjectivation. Echoing how the synchronized moves of a flock of starlings conjure up a billowing cloud of ever shifting images—a display known as a "murmuration"—the works in the collection also adjust and regroup with each new presentation, revealing different nodes or maps of meaning.

The celebration of MACBA’s thirtieth anniversary is an apt moment to take stock and look back over how the museum’s past has shaped its present, as well as a welcome opportunity to appreciate how it has evolved. This is not only a tribute but also a critical reassessment of the interwoven threads that have fashioned the museum we know today. From the outset, the MACBA Collection has gradually taken shape by embracing the challenges of its contemporaneity and taking the necessary risks to become a platform for bold, politically engaged practices. Year on year, it unfolds like a growing murmuration, a constellation of voices emerging from the past to produce a polyphonic resonance with infinite, boundless and diverse ambitions. 

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