The Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art (Spainish: Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, CAAC) is a museum dedicated to contemporary art located in Seville, under the Ministry of Culture of the Junta de Andalucía. Since 1997 it has been based in the monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas, also known as La Cartuja, a space recovered for the 1992 Universal Exposition.
Currently, and based on three basic concepts that commit us to the defense of singularity versus standardization and spectacle, the vocation of interdisciplinarity and the creation of community, and the critical analysis of museum mediation devices, we find ourselves in the beginning of a transition process to find a location that places us between two models of cultural mediation: the art center and the culture center. The objective is to develop a catalog of acceptable definitions of a space for cultural action in which the encounter with otherness takes place without the desire for conquest or domination.
Since its inception, one of the main objectives of the Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art has been to develop a program of activities that, with a clear educational intention, seeks to promote the study and promotion of contemporary international artistic creation in its most varied expressions. Temporary exhibitions, seminars, workshops, concerts, meetings, recitals, film series, conferences … have been the communication tools used to carry out this purpose.
The cultural offer of the Center is complemented by a visit to the monument that houses an important artistic and archaeological heritage, product of its long history.
It was inaugurated on January 1, 1998, although it had already been created in 1990, and is one of the main spaces in Andalusia that houses contemporary art, both continuously and through various temporary exhibitions. The museum has more than 3,200 works of art.
History
The Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art was created in February 1990 the Autonomous Community of Andalusia wanted to create an appropriate institution for research, conservation, promotion and dissemination of contemporary art. With time and progressively, works were acquired with the idea of taking the first steps in the configuration of a permanent collection of contemporary art.
In 1997 the Cartuja Monastery became the centre’s headquarters, a move which was to prove decisive in the evolution of the institution. The CAAC, an autonomous organisation dependent on the Andalusian Government (Junta de Andalucía), took over the collections of the former Conjunto Monumental de la Cartuja (Cartuja Monument Centre) and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla (Contemporary Art Museum of Seville).
Since its inception in 1998, one of the main objectives of the Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art has been to develop a program of activities that, with a clear educational intention, seeks to promote the study and promotion of contemporary international artistic creation in its most varied Expressions Temporary exhibitions, seminars, workshops, concerts, meetings, recitals, film series, conferences … have been the communication tools used to carry out this purpose.
The cultural offer of the Center is complemented by a visit to the monument that houses an important artistic and archaeological heritage, product of its long history.
From the outset, one of the main aims of the centre has been to develop a programme of activities attempting to promote the study of contemporary international artistic creation in all its facets. Temporary exhibitions, seminars, workshops, concerts, meetings, recitals, film cycles and lectures have been the communication tools used to fulfil this aim.
The centre’s programme of cultural activities is complemented by a visit to the monastery itself, which houses an important part of our artistic and archaeological heritage, a product of our long history.
Advisory Commission
The Center has a joint technical advisory committee composed of: Víctor Pérez Escolano, Francisco Jarauta, Juan Bosco Díaz de Urmeneta and José Guirao, on the one hand, and Berta Sichel, María Dolores Jiménez-Blanco Carrillo de Albornoz, Natalia Bravo and Luisa López , for the other.
Collection
From a chronological point of view, the theoretical beginning of the collection of the Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art is located in the mid-fifties of the last century and extends to this day.
From a chronological point of view, the theoretical beginning of the collection of the Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art is located in the mid-fifties of the last century and extends to this day. The collection pays special attention to the history of contemporary Andalusian creativity in its relationship with other national and international artistic contexts. In this section we offer a list with a selection of the authors who are part of the CAAC funds. With red color appear those that currently have one or more works in the exhibition space that the Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art devotes to its collection. You can also visit the web project Learning with the collection, where a didactic approach to the CAAC collection is proposed through a series of interpretations and proposals for debates on some of his works.
Publications
Since it began its activities in the early nineties, the Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art has developed an important editorial work that has been carried out in close collaboration with other entities and institutions. The CAAC has published catalogs of the most representative samples that it has organized, but also several monographic books about some contemporary creators. We offer a detailed list of all these publications, including both their bibliographic reference and a brief summary of their content.
You can buy some of these publications in the Virtual Library of the Ministry of Culture of the Junta de Andalucía.