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..

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.

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.
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

To celebrate International Museum Day, CA2M has come up with a new way of activating its collection and making it more widely accessible.
“ASSOCIATED MAKING. ASSEMBLY KIT OF PIECES FROM THE CA2M COLLECTION” is a curatorial programme by Marta Ramos-Yzquierdo that views the exhibition as an open, imaginative and surprising reflection in which artists, institutions and audiences can collectively rethink our contemporaneity.

There is a signature feature to Hannah Collins’s photos of urban horizons: the sky is always tinted with a strange colour. Like the images over the credits of an imaginary film, this photo captures the feeling that a particular place—whether through premeditated cultural references or a subjective impression—produced in the artist at a certain point in time.

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.