TBA21 Collection

The TBA21 Collection is one of the world's leading private contemporary art collections, internationally recognized for its pioneering role in addressing ecological urgencies and social transformation through art.

In 2002, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza — the fourth generation of the Thyssen-Bornemisza family devoted to the arts — founded the TBA21 Foundation, which operates through its collection and an extensive program of activities that includes exhibitions and public and educational programs.

Commissions: a collection that prioritizes new productions.

Soon after its founding, the Foundation moved from collecting artworks to commissioning and producing artistic projects that challenge traditional categories, focusing on large-scale installations, research-based works, sound compositions, performances, and contemporary architecture projects. This practice of commissioning and working in sustained collaboration with curators and artists shapes and defines the TBA21 Collection.

Distinctive Vision

The Collection foregrounds art engaged with environmental transformations, social and gender justice, posthuman and more-than-human perspectives, Indigenous and ancestral knowledges, and transdisciplinary, ecosystemic approaches to the challenges of our times.

Unlike many collections organized by chronology or geography, TBA21 collects, curates, and produces alongside artists, always prioritizing the defense of the commons, responsibility, and socio-political urgency.

The collection sets out as a critical intervention in Western art-historical narratives. It amplifies voices long underrepresented — from the so-called Global South, Indigenous and diasporic creators, and feminist, LGBTQI+, trans, and non-binary voices — with the aim of giving visibility to the complexity and diversity of the world and to the emancipatory struggles of communities still bearing the violences and extractivism of past and new forms of colonialisms.

Amid the urgency of ecological, political, and social regeneration, the collection advances a visionary perspective that weaves together art, knowledge, and imagination to shape a more sustainable and just future.

Conceptual Lines

The collection holds a curatorial vision defined by responsibility, imagination, and experimentation. The works in the collection address the most urgent issues of the present moment while anticipating the transformations of the future, functioning as an ever-evolving tool for reflection, research, and public dialogue.

• Ecological Transformations and Planetary Futures — Artists who reimagine the relationship between humans and the planet, addressing themes of climate, interdependence, and regeneration.

• Social, Feminist, and Gender Justice — Art as a form of civic action, questioning structures of inequality and proposing new solidarities.

• Indigenous, Ancestral, and Situated Knowledge — Practices rooted in territory, tradition, and collective memory, offering alternative epistemologies.

• Embodied, Performative, and Participatory Practices — The body as a tool for learning, connection, and transformation.

• Transdisciplinary and Research-Based Practices — Collaborations between art, science, and activism that generate new forms of knowledge, truly transformative because they are applied and situated.

• Experimental, Conceptual, and Perceptual Perspectives — Works that expand the field of perception and thought through speculation.