COLLECTION
A collection encompasses the present continuous, past perfect and future perfect. The Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo houses the Contemporary Art Collection of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, now called the CA2M Collection, and the ARCO Foundation Collection.
CATALOGUE
All the works in the CA2M Collection and the Fundación ARCO Collection are available for consultation in our catalogue..
El control de las condiciones ambientales es esencial para la conservación de una colección. El edificio cuenta con un sistema de climatización a través del cual es posible mantener los niveles de humedad y temperatura requeridos para estabilizar y ralentizar el envejecimiento natural de los materiales que componen las piezas.
The Contemporary Art Collection of the Autonomous Community of Madrid came into being in the mid-1980s, with the acquisitions made by the Directorate General of Cultural Heritage via the Advisory Council for the Visual Arts.
Our Collection is growing every year thanks to acquisitions from art galleries, artists and heirs, as well as through donations. The Department of Culture and Tourism of the Autonomous Community of Madrid has a Commission for the Assessment of Art Acquisitions that usually meets twice a year to decide on any acquisition and donation offers that have been presented.
El almacén o área de reserva, es el espacio en el que más tiempo permanecen las obras de arte y también el lugar donde más obras de arte hay dentro del museo. Es, por tanto, una zona muy importante no solo para la conservación de las colecciones.
It was deposited at the CA2M in 2014, through a loan agreement between the Autonomous Community of Madrid and the ARCO Foundation. The ARCO Foundation Collection, set up with the idea of promoting the interest of collecting in Spain, stood out for being one of the first international contemporary art collections that has been able – from a Spanish standpoint but with an international vision – to tell the history of art from the 1970s to the present day, bringing together a reference list of some of its fundamental names.
A collection is like a living organism, where each part only functions in close coordination with the others.
El transporte de obras de arte es una de las fases más importantes de la conservación preventiva. Este paso intermedio entre el préstamo y el montaje es fundamental en la conservación.
Prizes
The ARCO Madrid Regional Prize for Young Artists was created in 2004 to recognise the best visual artwork (including painting, drawing, comics, engraving, sculpture, mixed media, photography, exhibitions or any other type of artistic expression, without thematic or technical restrictions) made by artists aged 40 or younger, with a sale price of €35,000 or less, and which has been displayed at the year’s ARCO Fair. The Region of Madrid purchases the winning work for the CA2M Contemporary Art Collection.
The Madrid Regional Estampa Prize, created in 2008, aims to recognise the unique character of one or more works by artists participating in the fair. The winning work is acquired by the regional government from the gallery with which the artist works and given to the Contemporary Art Collection of the Region of Madrid, based at the CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo.
El Premio Apertura Comunidad de Madrid se destina a reconocer la calidad de uno o más artistas que participen en las ediciones anuales de APERTURA, dentro de las distintas disciplinas que integran las artes visuales, sin límite de edad ni de técnica artística. Al constituirse como un premio de adquisición, las obras ganadoras pasarán a formar parte de la Colección del Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo.
Collection exhibitions
Let’s Think Positive came about in 2003 as part of the exhibition If Alive that Manuel Saiz presented at the Museu de L’Empordà in Figueres, Girona. The idea behind the exhibition was the beginning of the preparations for his future 65th birthday on the 10th of January 2026.
Many of Ángela de la Cruz’s paintings are presented as extended bodies with clear physicality as she twists the canvases, scratches the fabric or manipulates the supports. This makes each of her works a container of stories where paint takes on a physical and spatial presence.
Linz Diary, by the artist Emily Jacir, is a series of colour photographs taken in 2003 to capture the artist’s action which consisted of walking around a fountain in Linz Square, in Austria.
Eva Fàbregas envisions interaction with art through sensorial experience. Her sculptures, made of soft, ethereal materials like fabric and air, often include sound and beckon us to draw closer through the senses, to discover them through touch, generating an intimacy in which affect can flow.
Ixone Sádaba se cuestiona el significado de la imagen y qué puede hacer la fotografía ahora que ha perdido su atribución como instrumento para documentar la realidad. El Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo expone cápsulas de su colección, obras de la colección instaladas de forma casi permanente en espacios de tránsito del museo.