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A generation of artists, grouped together under the term "Arte Povera", emerged in Italy in the second half of the 20th century who, influenced by Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana’s artwork, and turning to the use of simple, everyday materials, realised a series of works that, without relinquishing a kind of poetic awareness of the world, were profoundly critical of industrialisation and consumer society. Of these artists, Luciano Fabro was the one with a more emphatic connection to the emergence of a new and revised approach located in the tradition. Thus he explored the creative possibilities and perspectives that, in a country like Italy, continued to open the ruins of the past.

In the installation designed specifically for the Palacio de Cristal, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller appeal to our voyeuristic condition, urging us to move closer and peer into a solitary caravan. Inside it we come across a woman that appears to be sleeping along with a series of marionettes and puppets in the process of being created and the figure of an old draughtsman that appears to be pondering how to breathe life into them. The scene is replete with metaphorical connotations that prompt a reflection on themes such as the passing of time, the humbling power of the imagination (both individual and collective) and the servitudes and limitations of the creative impulse.

The exhibition analyse Goeritz’s stints in Spain and North Africa in the 1940s, along with the international expansion of his career, which, in a Cold War context, occurred in the wake of his return to Mexico and which saw him become one of the key figures in the cultural landscape of that country.

The exhibition Really Useful Knowledge endeavours to position the notion of critical pedagogy as a crucial element in collective struggles, and explore the tension between individual and social emancipation through education with examples that are both historical and current, and their relation to organisational forms capable of leading unified resistance to the reproduction of capital. In doing so, the exhibition highlights the collective utilization of public resources, action and experiments, either forgotten or under threat of eradication, taking the museum as a pedagogical site devoted to the analysis of artistic forms interconnected with actual or desired social relations.

Virginia Torrente, curator of the exhibition Patricia Gadea. Atomic- Circus, talks about the work of a key artist to understand the cultural situation of our country during the eighties and nineties. The core of this exhibition revolves around the most productive period of Patricia Gadea's work, on his return from New York, where he formed the group Estrujenbank with the painter Juan Ugalde and the poet Dionisio Cañas. At this stage emphasizes the Circus Series (1991-1996), which summarizes the events of that decade in Spain as a clairvoyant messages of great forcefulness. Imbued with irony, like the rest of her work, to date they still have an overwhelming clarity and modernity.

republic is an exhibition by Juan Luis Moraza (Vitoria, 1960), assembling a broad selection of his works and structuring them in areas that examine the museum as a system of conventions and possibilities of citizenship. Moraza has always constructed, in a mutual interaction with his artistic output, a conceptual discourse, where language and ideas also denote a place inhabited by the artist, along with the forms and characteristics of objects and situations put forward in each project.

Acting in Shadows is an activity that aims to expand the artistic experience into a field of bodywork and theatricality. Created by Teatres de la Llum, this workshop seeks to explore the elements of theatricality in selected works from the collection of the Museo Reina Sofia, incorporating elements from the theater work, such as gesture, body language, scenographic composition and the expressive potential of light.

Losing the human form evokes an image of the 1980s in Latin America that establishes a counterpoint between the effects of violence on bodies and the radical experiments in freedom and transformation which impugned the repressive order. Stricken bodies / mutant bodies. Between horror and festivity, the materials gathered show not only the consequences of mass disappearances and massacres under dictatorial régimes, states of siege and internal wars, but also various collective urges to devise modes of existing in a permanent state of revolution.

This video on the set-up process of the exhibition Richard Hamilton (27 June – 13 October 2014) in the weeks prior to its opening shows the coordination between different teams in the Museo – from the curators to the conservators and assembly technicians – to install this complex and extensive exhibit. The piece by Juan Rayos, commissioned by the Museo, reflects the wide variety of mediums, genres and themes the artist used in over 250 works.

The Museo Reina Sofía wishes to embody the concept of an expanded museum, where the experience of contemporary art is both a source of enjoyment and knowledge. Its Collection, made up of over 20,000 works, avoids representing one sole and closed interpretation of art history, opting instead for multiple histories. A museum that is a catalyst for ideas, discourses and poetics in its temporary exhibitions and intensive programme of audiovisuals and live arts, as well as a continual forum for thought, debate and education designed for all ages through courses, conferences and workshops in which visitors take centre stage.

This exhibition offers a comprehensive retrospective look at the work of Richard Hamilton (London, 1922 – 2011), a key figure in Pop Art and one of the most influential British artists of the 20^th century. It was the last project Hamilton directly participated and includes, among more than 250 works, the recreation of a number of the exhibition installations Hamilton designed (and actively participated in) during the 50's.

The Museo Reina Sofía pays homage to the figure of Richard Hamilton by means of an eponymous exhibition, held between 27 June and 13 October 2014. The piece, produced by Javi Álvarez, explores the most unique aspects of Hamilton’s work, reinterpreting many of the artist’s techniques, such as appropriation and collage, to convey them in the sphere of contemporary video.

In this interview, artist Kerry James Marshall (Birmingham, Alabama, 1955; currently resident of Chicago), talks about the reasons why he chose to address themes related to life, culture and Afro-American history, until that moment barely represented, approached through multiple lenses to provide new visions of issues connected to racial politics, cultural representation and social emancipation.

The Exhibition photobooks. Spain 1905-1977 presents a journey through the history of the photobook in Spain, setting off at the beginning of the 20th century and ending in the mid seventies, via a selection from the Museo Reina Sofía Collection, contextualised and accompanied by an assortment of complementary material. Curated by Horacio Fernández, the exhibition photobooks. Spain 1905-1977 is in collaboration with Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) to present part of the line of investigation and acquisition carried out by the Museo Reina Sofía concerning photobooks.

With some 300 works, the exhibition recounts a different history of art, from the end of the 19th century to the present day, in which artists and activists play a part in redefining public space by exploring the city as a game board, questioning modern-day carnival and holidays, vindicating the right to laziness, reinventing the square as a place of revolt and discovering the possibilities of a new world through its waste. The exhibit takes the playground model as an ideological interrogation of an alienated and consumerist present.

With the title After the Shipwreck. The Cinema of Aki Kaurismäki (1983-1996), The Museo Reina Sofia proposed in 2014 the first retrospective of the Finnish filmmaker in a museum of modern art. This interview, written as a conversation, reveals some of the keys to his films: the existential desolation mixed with parody and black humour, gritty realism revised by quotes and fable, an ethic but nihilistic gaze to society and above all, unwavering belief in cinema as a space of freedom.