Museum of Contemporary Art and Design - Building and Collections

Building and Collections

Occupying approximately 1,200 square meters in Costa Rica's capital, San José, the museum has four exhibition rooms, an auditorium, and the Pila de la Melaza — an open-air space for performances installations, and other events. There is also a small sales area, offering access to the museum's Web site, a Documentation Centre, and a Video Library, that includes video-art, documentaries about exhibits and performances. The library also hosts a wide range of art catalogues, art books and contemporary design books, which have been produced by the museum and other institutions.

The museum's permanent collection contains more than 900 works by both young and established artists, in a wide range of media, including painting, etching, sculpture, photography, installations, the intervened object, and video art. Selections from this collection are exhibited each year in the museum's galleries.

Since its founding, MADC has carried out a great quantity of individual and collective exhibits by national and international artists. One of the principal objectives is to exhibit artists and curatorial visions related with aesthetic, cultural and social issues which affect the Central American region and the world. The museum programme consists of art competitions, video-based exhibitions, digital art and emerging artists. The programmes and projects all contribute to the issues and concerns surrounding contemporary art and design in the Central American region.