The board of trustees of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia (MNAC), the highest body of the museum of which the Generalitat, Barcelona City Council and the Ministry of Culture are part, yesterday gave the green light to the signing of Manuel Borja-Villel, who during the next three years he will be in charge of rethinking its extension, in the Victòria Eugènia pavilion, in close collaboration with its director, Pepe Serra. As La Vanguardia advanced, the former director of Macba and Reina Sofia will depend on Natàlia Garriga's Ministry of Culture and among his functions, published in the DOGC, there will also be that of advising and providing an external vision regarding throughout the Catalan museum system. Its incorporation will take effect in September.
"Manolo had to return to the city where he was born as the great director he is, and it is important that Barcelona also recognize him for everything he did in this city," says Jordi Martí, deputy mayor for Culture and the person who gestated the operation from the beginning. "When I took over the Culture area a year ago, one of the many visits I made was to the MNAC and I realized that what was at stake was not an expansion, but rather a reinvention of the museum. With Victòria Eugènia it will gain 15,000 square meters [30,000 if you take into account that the height of the pavilion allows for a second floor]. It will be the great museum project that will be launched in Barcelona and Catalonia in many years and it was worth devoting all the resources to imagine this future museum that will no longer have anything to do with the one we know now”.
For Martí, number two of Ada Colau in the next municipal elections, the MNAC "is the museum that explains a country and a culture and the opportunity to rethink how this culture is explained and this country arrives at an unbeatable time" . The idea of contacting a figure like Manuel Borja-Villel, who in the latest issue of the international magazine Artforum is consecrated as the best curator and museum director of modern and contemporary art in the world by the prestigious theorist Ive-Alain Bois, it comes precisely from the work he developed at the Macba and especially at the Reina Sofia, "where he carried out a radical transformation by breaking the linear story of art history to contextualize it socially and politically and enrich its story. This, which in the field of the contemporary is already almost a common currency, has not been done in another type of museum, let's say encyclopedic, like the MNAC, and it was very worthwhile to take advantage of this moment of growth to try - it".
Martí and Borja-Villel started the talks more than a year ago, when the latter still didn't know if he would run for re-election at the Madrid museum, but he immediately showed himself ready to study it. It was clear that he did not want to run a museum again, on the other hand such a proposal fit into his plans and, moreover, it was quite a challenge. And for us it's a boost to our self-esteem."
"Pepe Serra is the director and he has full confidence, both on our part and on the part of the Generalitat, and I think the mix will work". Borja-Villel's contract will be attached to the Ministry of Culture to develop the so-called Temporary Program for the development and fit into the art museum system of the expansion and promotion project of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, which was approved by the Government of the Generalitat on February 21. Although the document subsequently published by the Diari de la Generalitat de Catalunya (DOGC) stipulates the functions specific to a director, in the note made public yesterday by the board of trustees it is detailed that it will be a task of "support for the reflection and innovation aimed at making contributions to the project that the museum is preparing, in the specific issues that the museum establishes". He will have a team made up of an administrator and a technician, and will receive a salary comparable to that of a general manager, plus ten percent in terms of variable remuneration, with a maximum of 99,000 euros.
In the signing of Borja-Villel, who is currently curator of the São Paulo Biennale, even the president Pere Aragonès himself was involved, who interviewed him in Madrid. His role will not be limited to the expansion of the MNAC, but will assume a leadership role in the Catalan museum system. "Manolo is the professional with the most intellectual prestige in the contemporary and modern art sector, and I think his relationships and contacts in the international arena will also help us project ourselves", concludes Martí.
