Some art museums feel like temples or tombs. Every room is hushed and reverent. Moco, on the other hand, feels like it opened a nightclub in a palace while it was still high from hanging out at Art Basel. And honestly? We loved it.
There are (currently) three Moco Museums—the original in Amsterdam, this one in Barcelona, and the newest iteration in London. It’s a slowly growing boutique museum brand unique in its deliberate rejection of the traditional museum model, which can be elitist, opaque, and slow to evolve. Moco is designed to be accessible, Instagrammable, and aggressively of-the-moment.
Moco is short for “Modern Contemporary,” though it might as well stand for “Momentarily Cool,” because that’s the kind of art it trades in. Banksy prints, Basquiat sketches, Takashi Murakami tigers, an infinity mirror room by Studio Irma, and at least one blacked-out, post-apocalyptic sculpture by THE KID (caps required).
We weren't entirely sure what to expect when we visited, but we assumed it would be a light, snack-sized museum experience. An hour after walking in, we emerged slightly dazed, a tad overstimulated, and charmed by the museum’s unapologetically pop-first approach to art. And before you turn up your nose at a shamelessly modern modern art museum, know that it all works, at least in this setting.
Moco Barcelona sits inside a grand Renaissance-era palace that spent centuries in the hands of nobility and royal courtiers. You still see vestiges of its former grandeur in the vaulted brick ceilings, medieval stone walls, and frescoed cornices, though they now sit comfortably behind accessible, irreverent, crowd-pleasing art. It’s chaos. But it’s curated chaos that subtly subverts the space it occupies. And that makes a difference.
Founders Lionel and Kim Logchies built Moco as a counterpunch to the kind of museum that makes you feel dumb for not knowing your Yves from your Yoko. Instead of shushing docents in burgundy sport coats, you get pulsing color and boldface names. Instead of epic retrospectives, you get an hour-long dopamine hit with some actual artistic heft behind it.
In the courtyard as you enter stands a massive bronze KAWS figure, looming like a bouncer. The first few galleries showcase some of the bigger names from the permanent collection—Haring, Kays, Dalí, Basquiat, Murakami, and Warhol. Moving through, the art becomes a bit more unexpected and surprising. A couple of smaller KAWS pieces, and then a series of large-format prints by Hayden Kays that shout clever, depressed slogans in ransom-note fonts.
Upstairs, two full galleries showcased of-the-moment works by Robbie Williams—yes, that Robbie Williams, the pop star played by a monkey in his biopic, Better Man—whose art is touchingly self-aware and not as cringe as you might expect. There’s a gallery of Guillermo Lorca’s painterly dreamscapes, a glowing timeline of walking people by Julian Opie, and some more conceptual pieces by Andrés Reisinger.
Not everything is meant to last—at this museum or in history, frankly. The Logchies used to own a contemporary gallery in Amsterdam, and they conceived of Moco as a way to “democratize art.” That means leaning hard into what people actually like. If it’s iconic, ironic, or ready for a close-up, it belongs—a greatest-hits playlist of modern pop-culture-adjacent art. Designed for impact, it’s tightly edited, highly thematic, and engineered to impress in under 90 minutes. If you make it through without snapping at least one picture, you might be dead.
The museum’s collection is just as flexible. Some works are owned outright, but many are on long-term loan from private collectors, the founders’ stash, or wherever else the art world stores its toys. That gives Moco the freedom to swap pieces between cities or reinvent its lineup when the vibe shifts. A curated mood board.
By the time we hit the last room—Studio Irma’s mirrored infinity chamber—we had run the full sensory gauntlet. It was a little overwhelming, but deliberately so. Moco wants you to leave impressed, even if you’re not entirely sure what you just saw. Critics argue it panders to the lowest common denominator and trades on spectacle over substance—a “high-end selfie museum.” But I think it’s a breath of fresh air in a museum world that often feels too exclusive.
Could we nitpick? Sure. The gift shop is algorithmically calibrated to appeal to people who use “aesthetic” as a noun. And a few pieces felt like filler in an otherwise tight curation. But we’d go again. The museum does what it promises—opens your eyes, skips the jargon, and leaves you buzzing.
It’s neither highbrow nor lowbrow. It’s now-brow. And whether you walk away feeling inspired or mildly hustled may depend on your tolerance for neon, irony, and QR codes.
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