The COAC has signed an agreement with the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, MNCARS) to establish joint actions to promote, plan and execute cultural projects that contribute to increasing knowledge of contemporary art in general and architecture and urbanism in particular. This agreement, which will turn the COAC’s Historical Archive into one of the documentary sources of the Reina Sofia Museum, is based on three lines of action: the loan and exhibition of works, the development of research programmes, and the joint production of publications.

These actions include sharing works from the MNCARS’ collections and the COAC’s Historical Archive, respectively, in the form of temporary loans for exhibitions: from works of art through to documents and audiovisual media.

The Coderch Archive, now available to COAC members
When it comes to research, the aim of both organisations is to develop programmes of mutual interest that open lines of research and knowledge in areas associated with architecture and contemporary urbanism. The agreement envisages the free and preferential access of COAC members to the José Antonio Coderch Archive, which has been held by the MNCARS Library and Documentation Centre since 2018. 

Members will thus be able to refer to this collection, one of the most important in contemporary architecture, which contains around 10,000 documents classified between 1941 and 1978. Once the digitisation of the collection has been completed, the COAC’s Historical Archive will have its own copy, which will be available to members for reference purposes. 

Similarly, the Reina Sofia Museum will guarantee members’ access to other professional archives and architectural material it may acquire in the future.

Publications, congresses and conferences
The agreement is rounded off with the two institutions’ commitment to jointly produce publications on the subjects of architecture and contemporary urbanism, as well as the organisation of congresses and conferences.

The Reina Sofia Museum, a cultural benchmark
The Reina Sofia Museum is one of the most important and visited cultural institutions in Spain: it holds a hugely important collection of twentieth-century art, notably works by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí. It also has an art library containing more than 100,000 books, 3,500 sound recordings, and 1,000 videos.