Now booking · Barbican Art Gallery, London

Beatriz Gonzalez

An Amalgama Exhibition Experience:
Lecture + Guided Tour + Discussion
Exhibition: Until 10 May 2026 · Her first UK retrospective
Beatriz Gonzalez is one of Latin America's most intellectually sharp, witty and politically fearless artists. To encounter her work without context is to miss many details. This experience exists to give you the tools to appreciate her art fully. 

She spent sixty years asking how images shape us: how they define who we are, how we consume history, and what we choose to see when violence becomes ordinary.

HOW IT WORKS

One experience. Three moments to dive deeper

The experience doesn't start at the museum door. It starts a week before, and it doesn't end when you leave the gallery.

Before· 60–90 min

Online lecture

At the museum · London

Guided tour

After the visit · Over drinks

Discussion

Empty space, drag to resize
"In a way, my purpose is to conduct an analysis that is more provocative than suggestive. To tell the public: these images are yours, possess them. They represent you: cover yourself with them like sorcerers with their cloaks."

Beatriz Gonzalez
Empty space, drag to resize
The Artist

Beatriz Gonzalez

Bucaramanga, Colombia · 1932–2026
Beatriz González often said that "art says what history cannot." Working in Colombia from the 1960s onwards, her practice offers a sharp and unsettling portrait of her country. Drawn from newspapers and popular media, her paintings and objects question how societies consume images, construct memory, and narrate history. 

Her work engages directly with the political violence that has defined Colombian history. She borrowed from the visual grammar of tabloid newspapers and popular culture, questioning art as an active force in shaping collective memory and public consciousness. 
one experience: 3 stages to change how you look at art

  •  Before: a private lecture that sharpens your eye.

  •  During: a guided visit that changes what you see. 

  •  After: a discussion you'll still be quoting weeks later.

Write your awesome label here.
Dates & booking

18 places
Three dates. Choose yours.

All ticket holders attend the same preparation lecture on 21 April. Then choose the museum visit date that works for you.
Shared · All ticket holders · Online · Included

Preparation lecture: Beatriz González

Tuesday 21 April · 7:30pm · Zoom · 60 min · Daniela Galán

Included in all tickets. Recorded and shared within 24hrs for those who can't attend live.

evening

Friday 24 April

5:30pm · Barbican Art Gallery · Guided visit + discussion
£19 Exhibition ticket added to the final price

£95

Members from £55

morning

Saturday 2 May

11:00am · Barbican Art Gallery · Guided visit + discussion
£19 Exhibition ticket added to the final price

£95

Members from £55

Morning weekday

Wednesday 7 May

11:00am · Barbican Art Gallery · Guided visit + discussion
£19 Exhibition ticket added to the final price

£95

Members from £55

princing

Members pay less
Everytime.

The Barbican ticket (£19) is the same for everyone; it's the Barbican's price, not ours. Only the Amalgama experience fee changes with membership.
Empty space, drag to resize
price breakdown
Amalgama Experience: 
Online lecture + Guided tour
+ Post drink discussion
£95
Barbican ticket (at cost)
£19
Total all-in
£114
No membership

£95

Experience fee per person
+ £19 Exhibition ticket
monthly member

£65

Experience fee per person - priority booking
Save £30 + £19 Exhibition ticket
yearly membership

£55

Experience fee per perspn - best price + priority
Save 40 + £19 Exhibition ticket

Member discounts applied automatically at checkout. Annual membership: £249/year — pays for itself after 3 experiences.

Meet your curator

Daniela Galán is one of the leading voices on Latin American art in the UK. She has delivered talks and educational programmes for the Barbican, Sotheby's, and cultural institutions worldwide, specialising in the art of a region that remains radically underrepresented in mainstream art education.

Her experiences are not guided tours. They are curated intellectual journeys built around genuine conversation, designed to leave you with a new way of looking at art, at culture, and at the world.

Daniela Galán Lozada

Art historian · Founder, Amalgama Academy
  • Barbican
  • Sotheby’s
  • The Art Society
  • International cultural institutions

what people have said

Amalgama's panel at the Barbican 

Before opening the exhibition experiences to the public, Amalgama hosted a panel discussion at the Barbican with Maya Jaggi, Gabriela Salgado & Lotte Johnson. What followed was exactly what we built every experience to be: a conversation that made the work click for people who thought they already understood it.

"I connected with Beatriz like never before. Coming from Lebanon — a country that has lived through constant war — I connected with Colombia and a history I didn't know. What moved me most was how Beatriz navigated all that violence with humour and wit. She didn't make the victims constant victims. She gave them a critical standpoint on history."
Daniela, thank you so much for the conversation at the Barbican. I found the way you addressed Beatriz González's personality particularly enriching, her sharp wit, and the clarity and courage with which she has positioned herself on politically complex issues in Colombia. It was powerful to hear how that critical edge coexists with a practice so deeply rooted in the everyday and the popular. It makes the strength and relevance of her work even clearer.
Daniela, I'm writing to thank you for the high level of conceptual and technical insight in last night's conversation. I enjoyed every second, learned a lot, and am deeply grateful.  I left knowing I needed to go back to the exhibition."

González's work rewards the prepared eye.
This experience prepares yours.

Her practice spans sixty years of dense art historical reference, Colombian political history, and a visual language entirely her own. You can walk through the exhibition without any of that — and come away with a vague sense that it was interesting. Or you can arrive knowing what you're looking at, why it matters, and what it's hiding. The difference is not small.

You'll see the wit before you see the grief

Most visitors encounter González as a politically heavy artist. Prepared visitors encounter her as an intellectually sharp, often darkly funny one; who uses humour as a scalpel. That reading changes everything.

You'll understand what the images are doing

Her work is built on a lifelong interrogation of how images shape identity and history. Once you can see that, every work in the exhibition opens up in ways the wall labels never could.

You'll leave with a new way of looking

Not just at her work. At images in general — at newspapers, at advertising, at the visual culture that surrounds you. González's questions are not about Colombia. They're about all of us.

You'll have a conversation you didn't expect

The discussion after the visit — with a small group of people who've all prepared the same way — goes places that surprise everyone in the room. Her work creates that kind of space. We've seen it happen.

Exhibition closes 10 May 2026 · 30 places only

You can visit the exhibition.

Or you can understand it.

18 places across three dates. Her first UK retrospective. The experience that makes González click and leaves you with a new way of looking at art, at images, and at the world they describe.

Created with