Malaga postpones reopening the former contemporary arts centre to 2027

Culture

The city council's culture department will soon announce the public competition for the selection of a new artistic director of the centre, which has been closed for nearly two years

Paco Griñán

Next September will mark two years since the closure of CAC Málaga: the contemporary arts centre. At the time, the city council announced a rapid renovation, with the aim of reopening it in 2026, under a new name, MUCAC Mayoristas.

The idea was for the centre to be public, directly managed by the city council's department of culture. Delays in awarding the contract and in the progress of the renovations, however, have forced a change in plans.

The city council now expects the return to exhibitions and museum activities in the first quarter of 2027. Work is under way against the clock, as the city council wants to meet the deadline before the next municipal elections (May 2027).

"We're working under a microscope, counting not only the weeks, but the days and the hours," councillor for culture Mariana Pineda told SUR.

Her department is "coordinating" with the urban planning department, which is overseeing the architectural renovation. The contract was awarded in January to Malaga-based company Actúa for 940,492 euros (IVA included). The execution period is five months, but the renovation is taking longer due to the complexity of the work.

The work must definitively resolve the roof leaks, as well as restore the building’s exterior by removing the pastel white from its time as a CAC and recovering the original reddish hue it had when it was designed by architects Luis Gutiérrez Soto and Juan Jáuregui and inaugurated in the post-Franco era as a wholesale market.

"We've been given November as the deadline for completing the work, so the public agency for the management of the Pablo Ruiz Picasso house and other museum and cultural facilities (...) is adjusting the schedules to then prepare the lighting, the exhibition and storage furniture and the workshops and laboratories that have been planned for the artists' programme," Pineda stated.

Opening the new Mayoristas cultural centre is a top priority for the department of culture. In its first decade, the centre hosted world-class contemporary art exhibitions, before its achievements and ambitions declined.

The renovation will preserve the four exhibition halls on the ground floor, although an area opposite the library will be repurposed to create a new artists' studio, allowing selected artists to create and exhibit their work to the public.

The project also includes addressing the internal plumbing issues, installing new toilets on the ground floor that will directly serve the restaurant and relocating the reception area closer to the main entrance.

Choosing the new director

Alongside the building's renovation, another important issue is the appointment of the future artistic director of the MUCAC Mayoristas.

The city council has not yet launched a selection process, "open to public competition". The intention is for the successful candidate to join before the inauguration in 2027.

Staffing at Malaga's revamped Soho contemporary art museum remains a work in progress, with the appointment of a director still pending. Pineda said the public agency that now manages the future MUCAC Mayoristas is currently drawing up a new staffing structure to improve the organisation of its technical and administrative teams. The agency has already taken on the employees who previously worked at the former CAC under the museum's private operator.

Those staff are now preparing the exhibition programme for the future MUCAC Soho under the supervision of the agency's director, Luis Lafuente, until an artistic director is appointed.

The councillor said planning for the museum's exhibitions is already well advanced, with around 80-90 per cent of the 2027 programme in place, as is the case for the city's other museums, partly because the exhibitions must already be included in the budget. She added that the museum will focus on showcasing the city's own art collection, promoting local artists and developing partnerships with public and private collections in Spain and abroad.

Explore the SUR in English culture and arts archive