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Barcelona Symposium 2026 puts the focus on the future of galleries
Gallerists, artists, curators, collectors and art market specialists will meet at MACBA within the Talking Galleries on October 5th and 6th to analyze the transformations of the sector and the new challenges facing galleries.
MACBA is hosting the Barcelona Symposium 2026 by Talking Galleries on October 5th and 6th, a meeting that brings together prominent voices from the art world for two days to share ideas, experiences and perspectives on the present and future of galleries and the art market. The program combines debate, conversation and networking in a space for reflection on the transformations that the sector is experiencing.
One of the central issues of the Symposium will be precisely the review of the role that galleries play today and their relevance within an increasingly complex artistic ecosystem. The program will also address the motivations and new behaviors of emerging generations of collectors, as well as the evolution of the online art market, the situation of digital art and the increasingly close connections between art and luxury.
The meeting will, however, reserve a particularly relevant space for the experience of gallery owners. How is one's own identity built? How do gallery programs evolve over the decades? And what decisions allow a project to be consolidated within a market in transformation? These questions will underpin several of the conversations in the program, which also includes interviews dedicated to reviewing the careers of international gallery owners.
The Symposium will begin with Four Decades of Gallery Making: Victor Gisler in Conversation , a conversation with Victor Gisler, co-founder of Mai 36 Galerie in Zurich, that will allow us to explore four decades of gallery practice. This will be followed by the debate What Are Galleries For Today ?, a question that also serves as a starting point to analyze what role these spaces currently play within the art system.
The table will bring together the artist Michael Elmgreen, of Elmgreen & Dragset; curator and researcher Carles Guerra; and independent commissioner Samuel Leuenberger. The conversation will be moderated by Carolina Ciuti, independent curator and exibart director.
The program will have a wide representation of the international art and gallery sector. Among the participants are the artist Ignasi Aballí; journalist and author Georgina Adam; the art historian and critic Montse Badia; Jennifer Chert, of ChertLüdde; Massimo De Carlo, of MASSIMODECARLO; Natasha Degen of Sotheby's Institute of Art; Pau Escat, from Escat Gallery; Alexander Forbes, of Artsy/Artnet; the collector Marc Francés; Lucia Homs, from Talking Galleries; writer and researcher Phin Jennings; Mischa Lustin, from Galerina; Pedro Maisterra, from Maisterra; Divya Pande, by Victoria Miro; Rosario Peiró, from the Picasso Museum Barcelona; Miguel Ángel Sánchez, of ADN Gallery; Tom Seymour, of The Art Journal; Pau Waelder, from Niio art, and Jocelyn Wolff, from Galerie Jocelyn Wolff.
The program will close with a proposal open to the public: the screening of the documentary Warhol-Vijande: Más que Pistolas, Cuchillos y Cruces (2025), a project of the Suñol Soler Collection directed by Sebastián Galán. The film retraces Andy Warhol's visit to Madrid in 1983 and explores the relationship between the American artist and the Spanish gallerist Fernando Vijande (Barcelona, 1930 – Madrid, 1986), an essential figure in the configuration of the cultural and artistic modernity of Spain during the Transition.
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