Manuel Borja-Villel (Burriana, Castellón, 1957) is back in Barcelona. The man who gained prestige at the Fundació Tàpies, a center that he directed between 1990 and 1998, to later assume the direction of Macba, under whose mandate he managed to be among the leading European museums, has been signed by the Generalitat to occupy a A newly created position whose mission will consist of advising and accompanying the expansion process of the MNAC and, from there, playing a leading role in the entire Catalan museum system from an external and overall perspective.
As La Vanguardia has been able to learn, the former director of the Reina Sofía Museum, after resigning last January from running for re-election after leading the charge for fifteen years, has been the person chosen by the Minister of Culture Natàlia Garriga to direct the called Temporary Program for the development and fit into the art museum system of the expansion and promotion project of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, which was approved by the Government of the Generalitat on February 21 and subsequently published in the DOG. However, the negotiations with Borja-Villel, who is currently at the São Paulo Biennial, of which he is the curator, would have begun many months before he left the Reina Sofía and he has had an active and coordinated participation in them. City Hall.
From the Ministry of Culture they do not confirm or deny the choice of Borja-Villel to lead the program and specify that the name will be announced at the next MNAC board of trustees, which will be held in a couple of weeks. In any case, the same sources recall, "it is a very ambitious project that requires a figure with a lot of professional experience and a broad vision." The new position will have a salary comparable to that of a general manager, plus ten percent in variable remuneration, with a maximum of 99,000 euros. The office will also have a senior technician and an administrator.
"It is about opening a space for reflection around the museum system and projecting it into the future from the expansion of the MNAC", they qualify from the ministry. “We are aware that the Museu Nacional has been working on the project for some time and Pepe Serra, who was renewed for another five years in 2022, has our full confidence. It is more about having a vision, an external look that will advise us in the Department and from there you will be able to comment and make your specific proposals to whoever you are and will talk to whoever you have to talk to, and from there you will see what is done ”.
The MNAC Board of Trustees agreed in June 2022 to start the expansion project of the museum in the Victoria Eugenia Pavilion with the horizon set at 2029, coinciding with the centenary of the construction of the Palau Nacional and the Montjuïc urbanization. The document approved by the Government specifies that this extension must serve "as a lever for a profound renovation both in the contents and in the roles it represents in its urban environment."
According to the program, the person in charge must "rethink, in collaboration with the management team, the new role and narrative of the museum in the new post-pandemic era." And for this, "by order of the Board of Trustees, and in coordination with the management of the MNAC", it gives it the power to "formulate exhibition proposals or other activities whose realization allows to prefigure the new museum and evaluate the new proposed story".
Regarding the objectives, and although the Ministry warns that it is a very technical wording that can lead to confusion, what is expected in this case from Borja-Villel is that he places the MNAC "among the reference museums in Europe and in the world, in collaboration with the Barcelona museum system and the whole of Catalonia”.
Secondly, he talks about positioning it "as a main agent in the production of exhibitions and museum activities (conferences, training, etc.) at a global level, to make the voice of Catalan art reach the whole world, through the association with the main museums of the globe, and to be a motor of development of the related economic sectors”. Likewise, the museum must "assume a leadership role in the Catalan and Mediterranean artistic and museum ecosystem that helps to reorganize and promote new impulses".
Manolo Borja-Villel, like Miguel Falomir, director of the Prado, or Miguel Zugaza, head of Bilbao Fine Arts, as well as other international museum leaders, were already part of the team of advisers called by Pepe Serra for the future expansion in which he has been working practically since his arrival in 2012. And he himself has denounced on more than one occasion that the Catalan museum system was "completely obsolete, divided into little chapels depending on whether the ownership is from the City Council or the Generalitat" , and imagined the moment of enlargement as the propitious moment to “review everything with ambition and courage”.
Singularly, the program also includes as new objectives a good part of the issues on which the current director has been working, such as "reflection on the incorporation of new audiences, new sensibilities, new social representations, with an eye on the cultural rights, diversity and inclusion”.
