MUSAC – Contemporary Art Museum in Léon celebrates 10 years

The MUSAC Contemporary Art Museum building designed by Spanish studio Mansilla + Tuñón has uplifted the city of Lèon since 1 April 2005, adding a lot to the city's cultural life since then. An anniversary celebrated at MUSAC with lots of events and exhibitions.



The MUSAC Contemporary Art Museum in Léon, Spain is an important reference for the city, both because of its bright, colourful architecture designed by Spanish studio Mansilla + Tuñón and because of what it offers citizens culturally.



During the ten-year period since it opened on 1 April 2005, 156 exhibitions have been organised at the MUSAC and more than one million people have visited the 24 shows displaying works from the MUSAC collection and the 132 temporary exhibitions. The actual building was designed by architects Mansilla + Tuñón (link bio) and has become a landmark in the urban topography. The museum floor plan opens at the entrance level with a plaza that often hosts artistic installations, emphasising its open dialogue with the city. The plaza facade is distinguished by the 37 different colours of the skin of glass panes, referencing the stained glass windows of the old cathedral of Léon.



One of the many exhibitions celebrating the anniversary is “Self-Timer Stories‘ [Historias del autodisparador], a collective exhibition exploring the phenomenon that we know as the “selfie”, now extremely popular thanks to new technology and social media networks. An artistic practice with very old roots, first in painted self-portraits, then in self-timers. 

(Friedl Kubelka, PIN UPS, 1971, Colección de la artista / Artist’s collection)


(Dorit Margreiter, Case Study # 22, 2001, Cortesía de / Courtesy of the Federal Photography Collection – En depósito permanente en el / On permanent loan at the  Museum der Moderne Salzburg (Austria)

If as Paolo Schianchi writes in his book L’immagine è un oggetto. Fondamenti di Visual Marketing con Storytelling "the truth is only a falsehood that we like better" then the "Self-Timer Stories" [Historias del autodisparador] exhibition open until 13 September gives us the opportunity to consider one of the most important questions of our time - how we see ourselves - or how we want to be seen.

Christiane Bürklein

Project: Mansilla + Tuñón
Location: MUSAC, Léon, Spain - http://musac.es/
Exhibition “Self-Timer Stories‘ [Historias del autodisparador], from 16 May to 13 September 2015
Images: © Angel Marcos, © Olga Cuesta, courtesy of MUSAC
Self-Timer Stories:
Friedl Kubelka, PIN UPS, 1971, Colección de la artista / Artist’s collection
Dorit Margreiter, Case Study # 22, 2001, Cortesía de / Courtesy of the Federal Photography Collection – En depósito permanente en el / On permanent loan at the  Museum der Moderne Salzburg (Austria)