We’d heard there was a cool Miró museum in Palma that we’d missed the last time we were here. And no wonder—it took our Uber driver 30 minutes of skittering down narrow back streets and muttering like Google Maps had insulted his mother before screeching to a halt in front of a blinding white wall with a curt, “Estamos aquí.”
Somewhere inside was supposed to be a sprawling complex of studios, exhibition space, and sculpted gardens honoring the last three decades of Joan Miró’s life and work. We stared into a long, sunny courtyard devoid of people. No ticket seller. No helpful docent. Not even a surly security guard. Shrugging, we walked in because what else were we going to do? We did find a discreet “Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró” sign, which was vaguely comforting but not actually helpful. “Tickets this way” might’ve been nicer.
Befuddled, we headed in the direction that looked promising, up the hill toward an 18th-century stone house called Son Boter, which had been Miró’s second studio in Mallorca. But we were intercepted at the threshold by a staffer who very politely asked to see our tickets. As we hadn’t any, we were sent back down the hill with grace and a practiced weariness. We were clearly not the first hill-climbing idiots she’d dealt with. We eventually found the front entrance—nowhere near the front and not especially entrance-like.
The museum's main space, designed in 1992 by Rafael Moneo, features sharp-edged blonde stone walls and skylights that diffuse the Mediterranean light, perfectly showcasing the art. It houses rotating exhibitions of Miró’s work—there is a lot of it. The display during our visit focused on works from his final year, mostly unfinished or untitled.
The paintings were an exercise in contrasts. Some pieces leaned toward chaos with swipes of red and white on black, and one that resembled a framed tapestry defaced with graffiti. One wall consisted of a series of 12 works—11 in charcoal and one in full vibrant color, centered, like a punchline or a dare.
Among the walls hung with paintings was a virtual forest of Miró’s bronzes, stacked, alien, and occasionally balancing things that resembled garden tools or salad forks. A surrealist totem pole stood near what appeared to be an old, rusty washing machine. It wasn’t tidy or polished. But it felt alive. You could see Miró chasing ideas and experimenting right up to the end, still switching gears without warning.
From there, we started back up the hill, stopping along the way at the Sert studio. This is the home and workspace Miró had commissioned from his friend Josep Lluís Sert when he and Pilar moved to Mallorca in 1956. Sert, a star of modernist architecture in pre-Franco Spain, had been exiled for years and was teaching at Harvard when Miró invited him to design the studio—a gesture of friendship and defiance that brought the famed architect back to building in his home country for the first time in nearly two decades.
Miró had specific requests for the studio—north-facing light, large, uninterrupted walls, and enough space to work on multiple canvases simultaneously. Sert delivered a soaring, whitewashed interior with skylights that softened the light and quiet architectural tricks that made the space feel expansive and private. It wasn’t just a place to work—it was a place to think, to experiment, to go a little wild in peace.
The studio looks more paused than preserved, as if Miró had just stepped out for a coffee. Brushes in trays, easels angled toward the light, shelves stuffed with books and random, half-forgotten keepsakes. A carved wooden backscratcher mounted on the wall. A grinning Naranjito figurine dressed as a matador. A yellow “Je suis Miró” button. It wasn't a reconstruction. It was a brain—messy, personal, joyful, and easily our favorite space in the whole foundation.
We continued the trudge up the hill through a garden planted with native species, glimpses of the Mediterranean flashing through the trees, eventually arriving at Son Boter. Again. For the second time, slightly sweatier. Miró bought the nearly 200-year-old rural Mallorcan house in 1959 to use as his laboratory for giant paintings, sculpture sketches, and outdoor art. It’s much rougher than the Sert studio —thick stone walls, uneven floors, more rustic and less intentionally designed. The views were lovely and the vibes historic, but it was admittedly less interesting than I’d hoped.
We ended back down the hill in the sculpture garden, which wraps around the base of the modern Moneo building. A few pieces are grand, a few are strange, and all of them are unmistakably Miró. The nearby café offered a cold drink, some shade, and a last look back at the Moneo façade gleaming against the hillside.
It’s not the most obvious museum in Palma, and it’s certainly not the easiest to find. But that feels right. If you don’t get lost at least once, you’re probably doing it wrong. Miró would’ve understood.
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