- They have been acquired from the artists Annette Messager, Claudia Andujar, La Ribot, Ester Chacón, Pere Noguera, Oriol Vilanova, Kapwani Kiwanga, Venuca Evanán, Ángel Bados, Amparo de la Sota, Joan Gelabert, Ana Laura Aláez, María Alcaide and Robert Jacoby
- Of the 14 artists to whom work has been acquired in this edition of Arco, mostly Spanish and Spanish galleries, nine are women, 64% of the total
- Of the total number of artists, nine are not represented in the Reina Sofía Museum and enter for the first time into its collections
The Ministry of Culture and the Reina Sofía Museum have come once again to ARCO 2026 to reinforce the Queen’s Collections with the acquisition of new works and in support of artists and the most important art fair at the state level. In this new edition, the Ministry of Culture has invested 402,760 euros in the acquisition of 17 works by 14 artists, nine of them women, 64% of the total.
These acquisitions have strengthened and even increased the commitment to the presence of women artists in the collections of the Reina Sofía Museum, which currently account for 15% of the funds, as reported this morning by the Secretary of State for Culture, Jordi Martí, and the director of the Reina Sofía Art Center Museum, Manuel Segade, after the Permanent Commission of the Royal Board of the Reina Sofía Museum gathered today in ARCO.
Of the 14 artists whose works have been acquired by the Ministry of Culture and the Reina Sofía Museum in ARCO Madrid 2026, eight are Spanish and six from other countries (four of them Latin American). They are Annette Messager, Claudia Andujar, La Ribot, Ester Chacón, Kapwani Kiwanga, Venuca Evanán, Amparo de la Sota, Ana Laura Aláez, María Alcaide, Pere Noguera, Oriol Vilanova, Ángel Bados, Joan Gelabert and Robert Jacoby.
The acquisitions have focused mainly on Spanish art or Spanish galleries, going through a century of artistic practices, with artists ranging from the 34 years of age of María Alcaide, the youngest, to the 94 years of Claudia Andújar.
The selection of acquisitions has been made taking into account criteria such as increasing the presence of women in the museum funds, in addition to covering unpublished aspects or underrepresented in its collections. Likewise, it has tried to complement lines of research that are already being worked on in the Reina Sofía Museum, such as action and performance art, textile art, conceptual art of materism or relational art, in addition to completing some fundamental names in the panorama of contemporary art and not yet existing in its funds.
Most of the artists, nine of the fourteen, 64%, are not represented in the museum, that is, they enter for the first time into the collections of the Reina Sofía Museum. One of them is Annette Messager (Berk-sur-Mer, France, 1943), one of the fundamental artists of the last third of the 20th century in France who, although in 1999 he was dedicated a retrospective in the Palace of Velázquez del Retiro, was not yet part of his collections.
The acquired work, ‘Voeux avec laine’, (‘Wishes with wool’) (1989-2024) consists of photographs of details of the female and male body, and corresponds to its emblematic series called ‘Mes voeux’ which begins in 1988. Maria Ribot (Madrid, 1962), La Ribot, choreographer, dancer and artist, increases her participation in the collections with the work ‘Todos chichis y un flash’, (2000), a set of nine framed polaroid photographs, acquired at Max Estrella.
The three works acquired by Pere Noguera (‘Bisbal d’Empordà’, 1941) ‘Sapates (‘Shoes’) Primera enfangada (studio)’ (1979); ‘Rellotge i penjador (‘Watch and hanger’) Primera enfangada (studio)’ and ‘Televisió’ (‘Television’) (1979) enrich the sculptural collections of the museum with the representation of the Catalan artist in it.
Of the six non-Spanish artists acquired at ARCO, four are of Latin American origin. From the Swiss-Brazilian Claudia Andujar (Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1931), renowned documentary photographer, the work ‘A sônia’ (1971-2024) is acquired, a video installation with three simultaneous projections that delves into feminist and women’s artistic practices in Latin American art since the 1960s.
For her part, Ester Chacón (Santiago de Chile, 1936), with her work ‘Mamita’ (1978), enriches the funds of the Museum that already have other textile works inscribed in the field of female political and cultural resistance.
Venuca Evanán (Lima, Peru, 1987), a visual artist, educator and activist, heir to the artistic expressions of Sarhua, a community native to the Peruvian Andes in the Ayacucho region, joins the collections of the Reina Sofgía Museum with two works, ‘Duo of “llamaq y campona” (2024) and ‘Llamaq y campona’ (2024), with which Evanán makes an affirmation of identity, memory and cultural resistance, as well as community feminism in the life of Andean women.
By Roberto Jacoby (Buenos Aires, 1944) a new work, the video Body Art, is added to the collection: ‘15 seconds of fame at the Palladium discotheque’, (1988) about an action festival or participatory collective performance made in 1988 at the Palladium discotheque in Buenos Aires. It was one of the most unique proposals of the Buenos Aires underground circuit of the eighties.
In a postcolonial key is the work of Kapwani Kiwanga (Hamilton, Canada, 1978), a French-Canadian artist whose work analyzes the imbalances of power of the past and the present through the dialogue of historical narratives. The acquired work, ‘Flowers for Africa’ (2026), is a protocol for the creation and presentation of a representative floral arrangement of those that were exhibited during their official independence ceremonies in Guinea-Bissau.
In the desire to enrich and complete the textile design collection of the Reina Sofía Museum, especially the work of female artists with a voice of their own in the contemporary art of our country, the work of Amparo de la Sota (Madrid, 1963), ‘Mapa VI, Aqui ahora’ (2021), embroidered on two torn pillow covers and old bedsheets stained with tea, has been acquired.
In the case of Joan Gelabert (Mataró, 1954), his work ‘Triptic de Barcelona’ (1988) is incorporated, due to its link to the new reordering project in which it is intended to illustrate the irruption of countercultural movements, related in turn to other artists already present in the Collections such as Armando Suárez or Zush, linked by the hope of seeking a new universe.
The artist Ana Laura Aláez (Bilbao, Spain, 1964), already present in the museum’s collections, increases her participation with the acquired piece, ‘Dance & Disco’, (2000/2019), six photographs on Ilford paper, together with the documentary video ‘Dance & Disco’ (2000), which refers to the installation that the artist made in Space 1 of the museum in 2000 and which has been identified as a pioneering gesture that sought to subvert the traditional logics of the museum institution.
Finally, the work ‘Pluvial cape or mantle for horse’ (2025) by María Alcaide (Aracena, 1992), the youngest artist acquired in this edition, allows to incorporate into the collections this artist who reviews and updates structural issues for the re-reading of Andalusian identity from a feminist and ecological perspective.
➢ Link to the document with the new additions to the Museo Reina Sofía collection