"The exhibition seeks to highlight the IVAM collection, while showing a good number of the acquisitions made in recent years." The director of the Valencian museum, Nuria Enguita, said this yesterday in reference to the exhibition 'Scene 1. Making a landscape', which brings together fifty works by 33 artists that cover a time frame of a century, from 1930 to the present. With this exhibition, the IVAM kicks off the exhibitions scheduled for the celebration of its 35th anniversary with the institution's extensive funds.
“It is not a commemorative exhibition, but the first in a series that proposes dialogues and openings between the IVAM collection itself,” explained Nuria Enguita who is also, along with the museum's deputy director, Sonia Martínez, curator of the exhibition. It was presented yesterday together with Manel Vallés, representing the Fundació Banc Sabadell. “Our commitment is that it continues to be a meeting point, promotion and dissemination of modern and contemporary art,” said Vallés, recalling that the Fundació has been collaborating with the IVAM for ten years.
'Making landscape' is an exhibition understood as a possible scene of the collection. But it also dialogues with the other 'stagings' of the collection, both current and past. Nuria Enguita recalled that the public who visits the IVAM headquarters on its anniversary will find 2,000 works from the museum exhibited in its rooms: from “the two magnificent exhibitions” by Julio González and Ignacio Pinazo with the funds that gave rise to the IVAM, the 1,500 works of the 'popular' exhibition, the archive of Llorenç Barber, Juana Francés in Alcoi and a photography exhibition.
The exhibition 'Making Landscape', articulated in seven rooms, begins with Smithson's 'Spiral traversed', a sculpture of corrugated cardboard that folds on itself, crossed by branches on all its walls. Curator Sonia Martínez highlighted that “this handmade work is a kind of declaration of intentions: the exhibition crosses times, spaces, materials, languages, gestures…”. This crossed spiral fuses “the natural and the artificial, the finished and the sketch or the ancestral and the contemporary.”
From this idea, the exhibition draws a journey through gesture, performance, story, figuration and abstraction in which proposals by artists such as Cecilia Vicuña, Thao Nguyan Phan, Asunción Molinos or Adolph Gottlieb dialogue, 50 years later, with Smithson's work.
The exhibition reflects on issues of landscape, territory, roots or belonging, as in the pieces by Ignacio Pinazo, Henri Matisse, Horacio Coppola, Andrea Canepa, Miquel Navarro, Pierre Soulages or Pablo Palazuelo. Drawings by Paul Klee are exhibited alongside works in progress, such as that of Mar Reykiajvik, “which is being made”, in the words of Sonia Martínez. “There are also works that write with the body and from the body, as is the case of Àngels Ribé, Helena Almeida, Ludovica Carbotta, Zineb Sedira or Darcy Lange,” said the deputy director of the IVAM.
The exhibition also allows the public to be shown some important recently acquired pieces, such as the work of the indigenous poet and eco-activist Cecilia Vicuña -Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale-. In 2022, IVAM acquired one of its famous Burnt Quipu quipus, which is exhibited for the first time in this exhibition. The piece recalls the destruction of land around the world and the impoverishment that comes with it.
Celebrate the 35th anniversary
With the exhibition 'Scene 1. Making landscape', the program organized for the 35th anniversary of the IVAM begins, a week in which the museum invites you to live more intensely the celebrations that will extend throughout 2024. From the 15th to the 18th In February, the IVAM will host various activities such as the concert by Niño de Elche and to exhibitions such as those offered by Pedro G. Romero, curator of 'popular' and Rafa Barber, among others.
Director Nuria Enguita has pointed out that “the IVAM of 2024, and after 35 years of history, is once again the cultural flagship of the Valencian Community, it is the seventh cultural institution in the country and one of the icons that we project abroad.” . In her words, she highlighted the growth in visitors, acquisitions and donations and the increase in its presence throughout the territory.
Enguita highlighted that “the IVAM has witnessed the movement of the world” transforming into a place where research is key, a museum with cross-border dialogues, but also connected with its most immediate environment - the Carmen neighborhood, the city, the territory. , with programming “that tries to give a diverse vision of what is happening on the planet.” He also highlighted that, at an institutional level, “the IVAM Law of 2018 was essential to provide the museum with a new regulatory framework that reinforces control mechanisms and artistic independence.”
Regarding IVAM's future challenges, he mentioned financing, a “general challenge for large museums.” Other challenges are combining the importance of cultural tourism and the relationship with the nearby community, continuing to work on mediation and opening to diverse audiences.
Asked about the pending expansion, Nuria Enguita assured that “the IVAM must continue to grow and the architecture must respond to a program that allows it.” After the interventions undertaken at the Julio González Center to recover the entrance hall as a public plaza, the renovation of the cafeteria, the opening of the new store and bookstore and the rehabilitation of the archaeological wall, the director announced that conversations have been resumed with the current government teams in the City Council and the Generalitat to resume the roadmap from the museum's backyard.
The general director of Heritage, Pilar Tébar, confirmed that “various proposals and possibilities regarding the IVAM are on the table.” “My commitment is to consolidate the historic headquarters and consider expanding the museum,” concluded Nuria Enguita.
