Exhibitions in Madrid, a city full of art and innovation, are one of the central pillars of its vast cultural offer. From renowned museums to independent art galleries, through other less conventional exhibition spaces, the possibilities in terms of exhibitions are practically endless .
That's why every month we make a selection of the essential exhibitions that you can't miss in Madrid. Photography, painting, contemporary art, sensory and immersive experiences. There is a lot where to choose and much to discover.
1. Notre-Dame de Paris. The augmented exhibition
The Cibeles Palace hosts one of the most original exhibitions of the season: after having passed through cities such as Paris itself, London, Washington, Montreal or Dubai, it lands in the capital Notre-Dame de Paris. The augmented exhibition: an exhibition that is visited equipped with a tablet.
With it, visitors will have to scan “doors of time” to discover, through reconstructions, the history of the emblematic building
🗓️ From April 25 to July 14, 2024
📍 CentroCentro (Plaza de Cibeles, 1)
2. The Berlin Wall. A divided world
The Berlin park, in Chamartín, is not the only place in the capital where a part of the wall that divided the city is preserved. German capital in two: the exhibition The Berlin Wall. A World Divided lands in Madrid with more than 20 meters of that historic wall, nearly 300 original objects and espionage tools. Many of these objects are on public display for the first time thanks to the collaboration of the Berlin Wall Foundation.
🗓️ All month
📍 Canal Foundation (Castellana Room 214)
3. Eva Lootz. If you still want to see something…
From nearly 1,000 drawings to an installation of minerals and substances seen through ultraviolet light. In this exhibition, the Austrian artist Eva Lootz uses different supports and resources to reflect on concepts such as resonance, light, the limits of human perception or how we relate to matter.
🗓️ From May 8 to July 21, 2024
📍 Alcalá Room, 31 (Alcalá Street, 31)
4. Goya. The awakening of consciousness
With this exhibition, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando takes a tour that shows the change between the artist's production during his early years and his maturity. With a particularity: it presents ** restored and for the first time in history all the plates ** that Goya conceived and used to print his engravings.
🗓️ From March 22 to June 23, 2024
📍 Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Calle de Alcalá, 13)
5. PHotoESPAÑA 2024
PhotoESPAÑA, the international festival of photography and visual arts, returns one more year under the motto Perpetuum mobile with a total of 84 exhibitions and 293 visual artists. Among them, with a novelty in Madrid: for the first time the Teatro Real will become the venue of the festival with an exhibition of photographs taken by the composer Giacomo Puccini.
The exhibitions, as well as other parallel activities, will be distributed throughout other parts of the city (in state museums such as Romanticism or Cerralbo) and in the region, as is the case of Alcobendas and Alcalá de Henares.
🗓️ From May 10 to September 29, 2024
📍 Various locations
6. Antonio Palacios. The architect of Metro
The facet of the Galician architect Antonio Palacios as an architect of the Madrid suburban is reflected in this exhibition that Metro de Madrid dedicates to him on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth. The exhibition consists of 200 pieces of large-format graphic and audiovisual material, models and plans distributed throughout its 355 square meters. And chronologically, it spans from his first works in 1917 to his last works, for a complete retrospective.
🗓️ From May 9 to June 30, 2024
📍 Real Casa de Correos (access via Correo Street, 1)
Warhol & Vijande, appointment in Madrid
A trip turned into an exhibition. This is how the exhibition hosted by the Lázaro Galdiano Museum could be summarized and which is dedicated, precisely, to the trip that Warhol made to Spain in 1983 with the help of gallery owner Fernando Vijande, on the occasion of another exhibition: Guns, knives and crosses. Currently, the Madrid palace houses some works from the Suñol Soler Collection, such as photographs from the Altered Images Cristopher Makos series and other works by Warhol.
🗓️ From May 17 to July 25, 2024
📍 Lázaro Galdiano Museum (Serrano Street, 122)
Between silks and lace: the textile collection of the Marquises of Cerralbo
The Juan Cabré Exhibition Hall of the Cerralbo Museum shows to the public, for the first time, the textile collection that belonged to the Cerralbo and Villa-Huerta families. It is one of the most unknown to date due to its fragility, explains the museum, and includes everything from tapestries and liturgical garments to others from the courtly world such as fans, gloves, shoe buckles or lace - highlighting, especially , the pieces dating from between the 17th and 19th centuries.
🗓️ From April 18 to June 30, 2024
📍 Cerralbo Museum (Ventura Rodríguez Street, 17)
9. Here and now. The contemporary Czech comic
The Czech Center Madrid, the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Madrid, the Casa del Lector and the Germán Sánchez Ruipérez Foundation join forces to present the exhibition Here and now. The contemporary Czech comic, which brings together works by 20 prominent Czech authors such as Pavel Čech, Jiří Grus, Karel Jerie and Štěpánka Jislová. These are representatives of three generations that have marked the last 20 years of comics and comics production and with this exhibition we want to highlight their variety, quality and international impact.
🗓️ From February 29 to September 9, 2024
📍 Reader's House (Matadero Madrid. Paseo de la Chopera, 14)
10. Museum of Illusions
An experience that will test the limits of perception of the human brain. Optical and photographic illusions and amazing tricks occur in a tour in which you can touch, experiment, jump... and take a lot of photos of all the illusions that will leave you speechless.
🗓️ Choose date when purchasing your ticket
📍 Museum of Illusions Madrid (Calle del Doctor Cortezo, 8)
11. The intimate realism of Isabel Quintanilla
For the first time, the Thyssen dedicates a monographic exhibition to a Spanish artist and for this it has chosen the Madrid-born Isabel Quintanilla. An artist of intimate, close, everyday painting, which she shows through a selection of 90 works in which she portrays her own life. Domestic scenes, objects of the people he loved and landscapes take center stage in paintings that invite us to look for beauty in the smallest detail of everyday life.
🗓️ From February 27 to June 2, 2024
📍 Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Paseo del Prado, 8)
12. Sweet Space
10 interactive themed rooms and a world of candy and color to discover. That is Sweet Space's goal: to offer an immersive experience that involves all the senses, especially taste. A sense that you can put to the test, for example, in her ice cream laboratory. The different stages of the tour have been designed by artists of the stature of Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada to create a unique and, without a doubt, instagrammable world.
🗓️ Choose date when purchasing your ticket
📍 ABC Serrano (Serrano Street, 61)
13. Velázquez Tech: a museum only for Las Meninas
This museum is entirely dedicated to one of the most iconic figures in Velázquez's painting: the meninas. Its commitment as a multisensory and interactive museum will make you not only a visitor, but also an active participant during the tour: you can visit the room in the Alcázar where the painting was painted, design your own Meninas and even talk to Velázquez through of holograms.
🗓️ Choose date when purchasing your ticket
📍 Velázquez Tech Museum (12 Atocha Street)
14. The collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia. Between Bosch and Sorolla
One of the most outstanding exhibitions of the moment, since the Museu de Belles Artsde València brings part of its collection to the capital for the first time. In total more than 100 works will be exhibited in the form of a chronological tour through the collections of the Valencian museum, from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century. In this way, the public will find works by artists such as Juan de Juanes, El Bosco, Marteen de Vos, José de Ribera, Rubens, Benlliure, Ignacio Pinazo, Muñoz Degrain... And, of course, by the Valencian painter of light par excellence: Sorolla.
🗓️ From February 28 to July 14, 2024
📍 Maria Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation (6 Alcalá Galiano Street)
15. The last days of Pompeii
An exhibition that fits within the category of immersive exhibitions and that allows – or rather, recreates the illusion of – the impossible: walking through the streets of Pompeii, getting to know the lifestyle of those who lived there, its customs or its gastronomy before the tragic outcome occurred that made it disappear. The last days of Pompeii recreates those last days of the city and its people and, also, the moment of the eruption of Vesuvius.
🗓️ Starting September 2023
📍 Madrid Digital Arts (Nave 16 of Matadero. Plaza de Legazpi, 8)
16. Antoni Tàpies. The practice of art
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Antoni Tàpies, there are several tributes to the artist in formats such as exhibitions, such as the one that the Reina Sofía Museum and the Fundació Antoni Tàpies have organized. This is the largest monographic exhibition to date of the Catalan work with 220 works, coming from both international collections and family loans. It traces his artistic production from 1943 to 2012, paying special attention to his unique identity, experimentation with materials, and his reflections on painting and representation.
🗓️ From February 21 to June 24, 2024
📍 Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum (Santa Isabel Street, 52)
17. The exhibitions of the reopened ABC Museum
After four years closed, the ABC Museum reopens its doors to the public with free admission and houses the ABC Collection, considered an Asset of Cultural Interest and made up of 150,000 graphic pieces and engravings. Its schedule is from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and it resumes its activity with exhibitions such as The monkey cage. 6 looks at the ABC collection or Este Madrid, by Andrés Trapiello: a tribute to the city curated by the writer and journalist Andrés Trapiello.
🗓️ Various dates (more info on their web)
📍 ABC Museum (29 Amaniel Street)
18.On the move. Vehicles and carriages of National Heritage
Although perhaps the first thing you think of when talking about a saloon is a type of candy, it also designates a type of four-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle. And in the first temporary exhibition of the Royal Collections Gallery you can see a saloon, among other period vehicles used by the monarchy throughout its history to move around.
The exhibition is located on the third floor of the building and you can find floats, vehicles, sleighs or a travel litter that allow the public to get closer to "the history of the carriage in Spain and its role as a representation of power, from the 16th to the 20th century," says National Heritage.
🗓️ Until June 2024
📍 Gallery of the Royal Collections (Calle de Bailén, s/n)
19. 440 Spanish Theater
The Spanish Theater celebrates this year its 440 years of life, which make it the oldest theater in Europe, and it does so with this exhibition to pay tribute to its history. The exhibition compiles documents, anecdotes and images to make visitors aware of the legacy of this theater institution from three points of view: that of the artists, that of the public and that of the professionals.
🗓️ Until July 14, 2024
📍 Spanish Theater (calle del Príncipe, 25)
20. Hell and Wonders
The National Library inaugurates a new exhibition space in its basement and debuts it with the exhibition Hell and Wonders, which reveals treasures from the library and is located, coherently, in the place known in the world like "hell", where occult institutions hid their books. It is distributed throughout four rooms with different themes, and includes authors as diverse as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Marshall McLuhan, Carl Sagan, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Joan Brossa, María Zambrano or Italo Calvino.
📍 National Library of Spain (Paseo de Recoletos, 20-22)
Source: Madrid Secreto