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Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

national museum of art in Madrid, Spain

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ460889 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía ("Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre"; MNCARS) is Spain's national museum of 20th-century art. The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992, and is named for Queen Sofía. It is located in Madrid, near the Atocha train and metro stations, at the southern end of what is known as the Golden Triangle of Art (located along the Paseo del Prado and also comprising the Museo del Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza).

The museum is mainly dedicated to Spanish art. Highlights of the museum include collections of Spain's two greatest 20th-century masters, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí. The most famous masterpiece in the museum is Picasso's 1937 painting Guernica. Along with its extensive collection, the museum offers a mixture of national and international temporary exhibitions in its many galleries, making it one of the world's largest museums for modern and contemporary art. In 2025 the museum's main site received 1,601,732 visitors, up 4.2 percent on 2024. It consistently ranks among the world's most-visited museums of modern and contemporary art.

It also hosts a free-access library specializing in art, with a collection of over 100,000 books, over 3,500 sound recordings, and almost 1,000 videos.

Editorial summary

“Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía” enters the record as national museum of art in Madrid, Spain. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Museo, Nacional and Centro can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewMost useful as a place-based finding aid connecting the present description to earlier jurisdictions, maps and built evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1992, 1937, 2025, 2024—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1992. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Museo, Nacional and Centro.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Museo, Nacional and Centro provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q460889. VIAF identifies the subject as 147875412. The Library of Congress control number is n93059777. Authority coordinates are 40.409, -3.694. 8 of 9 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 1937, 2025 and 2024.

Critical limits

Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía primary sources, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía archive and Museo research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía”?
  2. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
  3. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.