2023-09-22 15:49:14
The new director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Manuel Segade, presented this Friday to the press the project with which he won the direction of the great flagship of contemporary art in Spain and the first thing that can be said about him is that is not breaking with the legacy of the 15 years of Manuel Borja-Villel or the previous directors. Segade understands it as a transition, a consolidation, a multiplication of stories, a “tentacularity” (following Donna Haraway) and a listening system that seeks consensus and greater openness of the museum.
The new director of the Reina Sofía changes the museum’s policy and allows taking photos of ‘Guernica’
Further
He inherits from Borja-Villel two next years of an already designed program that he does not see as an imposition but as “a wonder” and “a privilege” that ensures the Museum a program of excellence and that gives him a certain margin to “think ” in what will come next. Its most obvious imprint, the programming, we will begin to see in mid-2025 or at most in early 2026. Therefore, he asks for “patience” and explains that this does not mean that there will be no changes in the museum but they will be little by little and In some cases, details – such as permission to photograph the Guernica― that are not even communicated but that are carried out both in the offices and in the rooms.
He is aware that the exhibitions are the point of maximum intensity of the museum but, on the other hand, he thinks that the public programming carried out by this institution, which has been little known, should have more weight. And in that area it will be easier for you to intervene from your first days.
Segade has used many metaphors that have allowed him to make a more symbolic than factual approach to his idea of a museum, which is logical in this prologue. For example, he has explained that until now the Reina Sofía, or rather its collection, has been shown “like an atlas”, which would amount to a flat representation scheme of a geography, but that he wants to understand the museum as “a nervous structure”, which is why it has delved into the idea of multiple branches, connections and networks that do not necessarily function in a centralized way. That is why he has used the tentacular concept on several occasions, since octopuses, relying on another metaphor, have that type of peripheral neuronal cord that surrounds or avoids the brain in the exchange of information between their tentacles. For this reason, he would like the different areas of the museum, which will be reinforced, to be able to create their own networks and expand, creating in a more imaginative way, without having to go through the director’s office, who would be the head of the octopus.
In that sense, the relationships already established by the Borja-Villel Museo Situated program are key, opening up to the activist fabric of the neighborhood and which Segade wants to expand with relationships “in concentric circles.” He also wanted to highlight that he is very interested in supporting mid-career and emerging Spanish art.
Manuel Segade wants the Reina Sofía to be a place that radically goes beyond the definition of what we traditionally understand as a museum. In a traditional museum you look, “it is made for the eye” but in a contemporary museum the “whole body” comes into play. It must be a space “in which people can undo their habits.” In that sense, the museum does not “become” feminist or anti-racist but rather gender, diversity or class must be “at the heart of the artistic practices” that define the Reina Sofía as an “institutional subject.”
The new director wants the Museum to be a structure capable of recognizing key figures and moments, encouraging their study and creating broader contexts. Look more towards sures: both from the Mediterranean and America. Incorporate more external commissioners, interdepend and cooperate more with civil society. Include young people and popular culture more – in that sense, he has given as an example the question of why trap has not yet entered the museum and points out that artists like Arca, Rosalía or C should be “involved” in the museum Tangana as they already did with El Niño de Elche, ― and develop methodologies that allow an artistic practice that explores unpublished places that encourage “radical imagination.”
He wants the museum’s history to be better documented – its current website does not make its history prior to 2008 accessible but there will be a new one soon -, that more be written, that digital is enhanced, that the interior plaza created by the Nouvel building “be city”.
Regarding the works owned by the Museum, Segade has indicated that the permanent collection Communicating vessels it only shows 5% of the funds. And it has also revealed that 20% of the works in the room are deposits. For this reason, we must “exhume” the work of the warehouses; they have dared to say that even “bad work” because it serves to explain the history of Spain. However, he has stressed on several occasions that what interests him is to reinforce a policy of deposits of regional public collections that make it possible to fill in the gaps in the collection, a strategy that he values as “simple movements” since the autonomies are represented in the Museum’s Board of Trustees.
Segade is aware of the criticism that conservative sectors have directed at the museum, in fact they have appeared at the press conference. Given this, the main point of his program is consensus. To bequeath him, he has designed two advisory committees. One general and another specific to architecture and design, since it wants to give greater importance to architecture.
The first is made up of María de Corral (the first director of the Reina Sofía), João Fernandes (director of the Moreira Sales Institute in Brazil), Amanda de la Garza (director of the UNAM University Museum of Contemporary Art), Inés Katzenstein (director of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Institute for the Study of Latin American Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York), Chus Martínez (director of the Institute of Art Gender Nature at the FHNW Academy of the Arts and Design in Basel), Gloria Moure ( curator) and Vicente Todolí (artistic director of Pirelli HangarNicocca).
The architectural advisory committee is made up of Juan Herreros (professor at the Madrid School of Architecture), Andrés Jaque (dean and professor at the Columnia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation) and Marina Otero (visiting professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation). After appointing all these new advisors, Segade has stressed that one of his intentions is to recover to a certain extent “the forces of Spanish art in the diaspora.”
The new director has also outlined, in the chapter on own income, that he hopes to be able to use “the instruments of the advance of the future patronage law”, that the influx of public remains as it has been until now – if it grew disproportionately it would be a problem ― and has promised, in terms of transparency, an Annual Report “easy to understand for society in general.” Regarding the workforce, the four senior management positions will soon be put out to public tender and he wanted to highlight his concern for the positions of the room guards, whose needs they are “trying to cover 100%”, whom he considers “the face of the museum” and to whom it will serve better in their demands and by giving them training.
#open #tentacular #consensus