Three months after renouncing the re-election at the Reina Sofía and leaving the Madrid museum after fifteen years in office, Manuel Borja-VillelHe already has a new destination: the former director of MACBA and the Tàpies Foundation returns to Barcelona as an adviser to the Department of Culture of the Generalitat. Among his tasks, according to ‘La Vanguardia’ this Thursday, is “accompanying” the expansion process of the National Art Museum of Catalonia and providing an overview of the entire network of Catalan museums.
While waiting for the Generalitat and MNAC to accept information at which point they neither confirm nor deny, Borja-Villel’s would be a newly created position that emanates from the ‘Temporary Program for the development and fit into the art museum system of the expansion project and promotion of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia’, a project approved by the Catalan government on February 21. His salary, according to the Catalan newspaper, would be comparable to that of a general director, with a maximum of 99,000 euros.
Borja-Villel, who was already part of the team of advisers summoned by Pepe Serra, director of the MNAC, to face the expansion of the museum, will now have the mission of rethinking “in collaboration with the management team”, the new role of the museum in the future.
«Sometimes we have not been able to understand that there was another type of model with another type of modernity and one thing that everyone criticizes us is that in Spain there is no 19th century museum, without which you cannot understand the world, and yes that it is: it is the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, because even the art of the Middle Ages that can be seen is the result of a 19th century vision”, explained Borja-Villel himself in a recent interview.
In addition, the former director of the Reina Sofía will lead a space for reflection on the Catalan museum system.