Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an ...

Es Baluard. Porta Sta. Catalina, 10. 07012 Palma [email protected] Tel. +34 971 908 201 www.esbaluard.org

Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines. Hans Haacke

A banner with the word MUSEU (museum in Catalan) remains placed on the Es Baluard's facade since 20th October 20, 2015, when the second review of the museum's collection was opened. This banner names and signs the main building of the museum of modern and contemporary art of Palma de Mallorca but also symbolises the debate about the real meaning of a museum today and is manifested and seen as a gesture of claim. “Museu” is therefore launched as a horizontality device generated by Es Baluard designed to become a medium for dialogue and debate on these cultural infrastructures, involving the professional sector (and by extension, its training and management spheres), public and private institutions and society. It now turns into a blog aimed to collect and invigorate commitments from the written to the visual.

A museum is an agora, a platform for physical transitions and virtual wanderings. Our aim with this blog is to generate an open meeting place for its analysis and ontological and functional searches.

One of the objectives of this project is to discuss the reality of the physical and the possible obsolescence of the "museum" concept today. So we've worked with different entities such as IAC (Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo), ICOM Spain, ADACE (Asociación de Directores de Arte Contemporáneo de España). In addition, different professionals are slowly taking part on the project. Their texts and reflections will activate the blog throughout 2016.


Features of www.proyectomuseu.org:

-Main entrances are the core of this project, with texts by the professionals involved and those who will take part in it.

-It's formed by an area where the texts, that follow different lines of thought and reflection, are published.

-Glossary for discussion: we are interested to deepen a number of terms which, since they're trite or outdated, require a reinterpretation and contemporary analysis.

-File: we're collecting base documents which may serve to research as well as to become support lines for different educational sectors.

Participants in February 2016: Nekane Aramburu (Es Baluard) María Fernanda Cartagena Daniel Castillejo (ARTIUM) Comerciants de Núvols Isabel Durán (IAC) Marcelo Expósito Aurora Fernández Polanco Luis Grau (ICOM España) Roc Laseca Martí Manen Jorge Luis Marzo Juan Luis Moraza Chantal Mouffe Santiago Olmo (CGAC) Jorge Ribalta Juan Carlos Rico Yolanda Romero (ADACE) Tomás Ruiz Rivas Montserrat Soto Berta Sureda (Barcelona Council) Director of the “Museu” project: Nekane Aramburu Coordinator of the “Museu” project: Semíramis González


“Museu” Presentation text by Nekane Aramburu

In a world surrounded by images, a museum is a sanctuary. The centres and museums of the 20th century and the early two thousands imposed themselves as the privileged framework for legitimising good art, one which received the blessings of the entire establishment. Based on the forcefulness of architecture, their location and management were decided with vertical autism, thinking of great buildings, emblematic constructions or costly rehabilitations of disused industrial buildings, and not as a tool for sustaining creative and social needs. On the one hand, this instrumentalization – intrinsic to its origins in the Alexandrian Mouseion or the Ptolemaic kings — had extended, over the last few decades of the last century, into an exalted proliferation, with the imposition of grand high-culture projects. The economic crash of 2008 and the fledgling social movements, coupled with the extension of theories such as “degrowth” (which Serge Latouche predicted as early as in 2003 in Le monde diplomatique), the Theory of the Common Good by Christian Felber and new social behaviour, have enabled us to rethink the problems of an art system plunged into speculation and distanced from reality. Survivors of the crash from the last economic crisis, museums reinvented and recycled themselves to become places for the invigoration of culture and a sophisticated promenade enabling one to recognise the names of the establishment. Cultural tourism, transdisciplinarity, mediations, transparency... these are the new slogans for the diverse generations of museums/art centres and the excuse for the creation of others. In their warehouses they preserve, in the exhibition halls a confrontation is provoked before the public of spectators with new focuses, interpretations, permutations and combinations of the same. As Walter Benjamin advocated, we postulate that history is not about the past but the present and we present its images, filling in its gaps when the discourse requires. We can choose between immersing ourselves in the battle of dialectics and thought or adopting more passive, contemplative positions; we could also settle into the alternate path of so-called institutional critique. What are their audiences faced with when they wander around the white box that wants to be shaken? What is the sense of the public as an exercise in democracy? What are we really talking about when we speak of horizontal management of culture or its social return? The museum must adopt a critical function and propitiate discursive analyses, as a space for dialogue and research within its walls but also outside of them. A museum is identity, territory, but also globalisation. Collecting as an expression and attitude is what permits the transfer of knowledge and of the material and immaterial object. The different agents linked to the art


system – critics, historians, conservators, restorers, curators, gallery-owners and merchants – propitiate it. In the container for the features and marks of culture, as a great archive of legacies, the tangible and the intangible, the artist and the creative act are often forgotten. However, without artists, we would not be talking about art. As a result I feel it is fundamental to rethink the notion of museum as a public service with a social conscience, constructing an identity and models of thought supported by things close and real, and with a vocation as a hub and radar in the networks of the diverse cultural systems. It is not only an intellectual exercise out in the open but, in each of the actions we produce, it is revealing that will to legitimise the sense of the museum today, opening it up to debate, to the options for resetting its approaches and turning it into something alive.

Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma www.esbaluard.org

It’s a modern and contemporary art museum located in Palma de Mallorca and inaugurated in 2004 as a foundation with four patrons: Govern de les Illes Balears, Consell de Mallorca, Ajuntament de Palma and Fundació d’Art Serra. Es Baluard is a catalyst and emitter of history, contemporary tendencies and training through exhibition programmes, activities and educational cycles, as well as a living laboratory for current creative practices. Inserted in the glocal, we understand culture as committed to that which is related to identity from an international perspective that is both open and changing, organic and porous, just as the Balearic Islands have been throughout their long history. During this process of its resignification, due to its social and territorial value, Es Baluard develops in the physical environment and its spaces, but also in terms of presence in the digital environment and its satellite projects. The museum, beyond its architectural framework of the white cube for the exhibition, proposes new models of expansion of culture installed in the commitment to intellectual debate through collaborative structures and with society.


Collaborators Nekane Aramburu Cultural manager and curator, degree in History of Art and Master in Museology, she'scurrently director of Es Baluard Museu d'Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma. Specialised in the analysis of the management and construction of cultural policies and visual production, she had previously invigirated museums, including Fundación Kutxa or centers like Espacio Ciudad of which was responsible from 1999 to 2010. Since her beginnings in parallel to work in the museum and institutional management, she been interested in the culture as a laboratory for exploration, understanding and mediation of contexts and the tangible and intangible heritage from tentacular projects between unconventional spaces and museums. Thus, she has developed specific projects as a specialist in electronic art and in spaces and independent groups. She therefore has deepened extensive studies as Archivos colectivos: Historia y situación actual de los espacios independientes y colectivos de artistas en España 1980-2010 (Ministerio de Cultura) o Gaur (sic). Aecid/Instituto Etxepare. She has curated, published and edited numerous projects at national and international levels. María Fernanda Cartagena Maria Fernanda Cartagena (Quito, Ecuador) is a researcher, manager and curator of art; currently she serves as director of the Museo de Arte Precolombino Casa del Alabado. She earned her degree in Art History from The American University in Washington D.C. and an MA in Visual Cultures by Middlesex University, London, UK. Her research interests are the relationship between art and politics, art and anthropology, community art practices, critical pedagogies and spiritualities in culture. She has taught at the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Ecuador, Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar, FLACSO and Universidad Central of Ecuador. She has developed several educational projects and has been curator for museums in this country. She is currently involved as a researcher in social and community practices within the project Pacific Standard Time focused on Latin America and to be held in Los Angeles in 2017. She was in charge of the Executive Office of the Fundación Museos de la Ciudad 2014-2015. She is member of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur. Daniel Castillejo Born in Burgos in 1957, he lives in Vitoria-Gasteiz since his 3 years of age. He is the director of ARTIUM Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo since October 2008, and has been linked to this museum since 2001, first as curator of the Department of Permanent Collection and Artistic Analysis. Between 1989 and 2001 he directed the Sala Amárica (Vitoria-Gasteiz) and from 1985 to 2001, he was technician responsible for managing the Contemporary Art Collection of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Álava. He takes part as director of Artium.


Comerciants de Núvols Comerciants de Núvols are focused on developing projects in a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary space, besides keeping alive and active the art studio and the productions derived from it. Comerciants de Núvols is located in the Can Danús space of creation, a former manor in the center of Palma. Comerciants de Núvols schedule since two years ago cultural events, with over fifty different activities, of which highlights the organisation of “Edicionària”, the conferences on independent publishing, the exhibition series entitled “Inventaris” or the fine arts cycle “Efímera”, dedicated to women’s creation. In addition, they’ve conducted residence-workshops for artists, book presentations, roundtable discussions, specialised courses, plays performances, concerts and many proposals, self-managed and independent from the common cultural circuits. Comerciants de Núvols is formed by Javier Vellé and Elisenda Farré, coordinators and programmers, and the artists Saúl Herrero and Manuel Sánchez Monzó. Isabel Durán Isabel Duran is an art historian, degree of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and specialist in education through art. She has worked in the departments of Education and Painting and Sculpture of the Museum of Modern Art (1994), of the Education at the Guggenheim Museum (1994-95) and DIA Center for the Arts (1995) in New York. She created and directed the departments of Education of the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo (1996-1998) and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Unión Fenosa (1998-2004). Since 2004, she director of Programs of the Fundación Pryconsa and general coordinator of the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica. She has curated several exhibitions of contemporary art for museums and art centers, created educational programs specific to institutions both of art or educational institutions, she has given lectures and workshops, taught courses and published more than 30 texts on the current art for Fundación Juan March, Fundación Marcelino Botín, Comunidad de Madrid, Ediciones SM, etc. Since June 2014 she is President of the Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo (IAC), an association that brings together more than 400 highly qualified professionals of contemporary art. She takes part as president of the IAC. Marcelo Expósito Marcelo Expósito (Puertollano, 1966). His job as an artist usually expands into the territories of critical theory, editorial work, curatorship, teaching and translation. He currently lives in Barcelona and Buenos Aires and is academic co-director of Programa de Estudios Independientes (PEI) of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (Cuenca). Member of the Universidad Nómada and the Red Conceptualismos del Sur, he's also part of the editorial collective of the Multilingual webzine transversal. He was co-founder and co-editor of the magazine brumaria (2002-2006). He has published, alone or in collaboration, the books Plusvalías de la imagen. Anotaciones (locales) para una crítica de los usos (y abusos) de la imagen (1993), Materiales 1990-1998: el malestar en la libertad (1998), Chris Marker. Retorno a la inmemoria del cineasta (2000), Modos de hacer. Arte crítico, esfera pública y acción directa (2001), Historias sin argumento. El cine de Pere Portabella (2001), Producción cultural y prácticas instituyentes. Líneas de ruptura en la crítica institucional (2008) o Los nuevos productivismos (2010). His most recent publication is Conversación con Manuel Borja-Villel, 2015.


Aurora Fernández Polanco Professor of Contemporary Art History in Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She’s IP of Visualidades críticas: reescritura de las narrativas a través de las imágenes (HAR2013-43016-P) (http://www.imaginarrar.net) and editor of the magazine Re-visiones (http://www.re-visiones.net). She’s been curator of the exhibitions “La visión impura. Fondos del Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía”. Madrid, MNCARS, 2006; “Alois Beer: un viaje en 3D por la España de 1900”. Valladolid, Salamanca, 2007; “Mireia Sentis: Fotografías 1983-2008”, Madrid, CBA, 2008; “Mireia Sentis Fotografia/Assaig/Comunicació”, Barcelona Art Santa Mónica, 2009. “Eva Lootz: A la izquierda del padre”, Madrid, Real Casa de la Moneda, 2010, “Image(s), mon amour. Rabih Mroue”, CA2M, 2013. Luis Grau Degree in Archeology and Art History, he belongs to the Cuerpo Facultativo de Conservadores de museos del Estado, and since 1990 he directs the Museo de León. In his professional field, he has organized and curated exhibitions of different themes (from prehistory to contemporary art). He is the author of a dozen books and more than fifty scientific and popular articles, on topics related to museums, among others. He is a member of the Junta Superior de Museos, the Patronato del Museo Arqueológico Nacional and the Patronato de la Fundación Sierra-Pambley of León, and president of ICOM-Spain. He takes part as President of ICOM-Spain. Roc Laseca Roc Laseca is researcher and curator, dedicated to the study and implementation of programs of visual culture based on local logic. His researches focus on the prevalence of "institutional thinking" -applied to art, architecture and museums, among others- in the creation and fall of contemporary communities. He has a PhD in Art Theory and Cultural Prospective, and studied in the Universidad Complutense Madrid, Universidad de La Laguna and University of Helsinki. He is currently director of "Los Encuentros Denkbilder", the six-month program of experimental artistic exchange that takes place in Tenerife, with which he has articulated initiatives together with Jannis Kounellis, Joseph Kosuth, Chris Dercon and Nicolas Bourriaud. Since 2013 he is Visitor Curator at Fundación Saludarte / IdeoBox Artspace where he launched the exhibition cycles “Arquitecturas del Desarraigo” and founded the international congress “Latin Off Latin: Collecting Latin American Art Outside Latin America”, in collaboration with the regional curators of Guggenheim New York, Museo del Barrio and Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Ángeles. In 2012 and 2013, he was guest curator of the museum MOCA North Miami, where he organised the solo exhibition of Bill Viola (New Times Best Museum Exhibit Award) and a nomination of the National Award AICA of the USA. His last book, El Museo Imparable. Sobre Institucionalidad Genuina y Blanda, was published in 2015 by Ediciones Metales Pesados.


Martí Manen Curator and art critic based in Stockholm. His recent curated highlights are the Spain Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2015 and the series "Cuando las líneas son tiempo" in Espai 13 at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona. Previously, he has curated exhibitions at the Museo de Historia Natural (México DF, 2003), Sala Montcada - Fundación la Caixa (Barcelona, 2004-2005), Aara (Bangkok, 2005), Sala Rekalde (Bilbao, 2005), Konsthall C (Stockholm, 2007), La Panera (Lleida, 2007)), Zero1 (Olot, 2009), Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) (Móstoles, Madrid, 2012) among others. He’s been co-curator of the Turku Bienal in Finland (2011) and co-directed the exhibitions programme “El texto: Principios y salidas” in Fabra i Coats Centre d’Art Contemporani of Barcelona (2014). He is tutor at the curator master of the University of Stockholm and in the advanced programme Curatorlab in Konstfack, in the same city. He has published books like Salir de la exposición (si es que alguna vez habíamos entrado) and Contarlo todo sin saber cómo. Jorge Luis Marzo Art historian curator, writer and professor at BAU Centro Universitario de Diseño (Barcelona) since 2012. He’s curated the highlited exhibitions “El d_efecto barroco. Políticas de la imagen hispana” (2010-2011) at CCCB, “Low-Cost.Libres o cómplices” (2009), “Spots electorales. El espectáculo de la democracia” (2008), “Hemos tomado la radio” (2006-2007), “Tour-ismos. La derrota de la disensión” (2004), “Indivisuals” (2002), “En el lado de la TV” (2002), o “El corazón de las tinieblas” (2002), among others. Juan Luis Moraza Doctor of Fine Arts from the UPV-EHU (1994), he received a scholarship of Banesto in 1990 and the scholarship of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1991. He’s founding member of the collective CVA (1980-1985) together with Marisa Fernández, where he created works of a marked conceptualism. He teaches at the Department of Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Universidad de Vigo and taught at the Universidad del País Vasco, being also invited at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Universidad de Cuenca, in the Ecole d'Art of Marseille, at the University of Tirana, at the Instituto de Estética y Teoría de las Artes de Madrid, the Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo. He has organised and taken part in various seminars, courses and workshops on creativity and artistic production in the new knowledge society, such as “ARTE y SABER” (Arteleku. San Sebastián and UNIA, Sevilla, 2004); the congress “La mujer ante el umbral del nuevo milenio” (Universidad de Salamanca- The British Council. Salamanca, 1996); or the XII Congreso Internacional de Estética (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1992); among others. His most recent exhibition is “república” in 2015 at the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid).


Chantal Mouffe Belgian philosopher and political scientist. She has worked at universities in Europe, North America and Latin America, and has been responsible for research at Harvard University, Cornell University, University of California, at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. Between 1989 and 1995 she was director of the programme of the International College of Philosophy in Paris. With her husband Ernesto Laclau (1935-2014) she initiated the philosophical current post-Marxism, where the Marxist heritage is rethought from the point of view of the social transformations of recent decades. Together with Laclau, she was activist in social struggles of the sixties. Some of her emblematic works are Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (1985), written with Ernesto Laclau, The Return of the Political (1993), The Democratic Paradox (2000) and Around the political (2005). She is currently professor of political theory at the University of Westminster. Santiago Olmo Born in Madrid in 1958, Santiago Olmo is independent exhibition curator, art critic since 1986 and has served on the editorial staff of the magazines Lápiz and Artecontexto (Madrid). Curator of the Spanish representation in the XXIV Biennal of São Paulo in 1998, in 2010 he directs the XXXI Biennal of Pontevedra and in 2012 he is curator of the Biennial of Guatemala. He has directed several projects associated with the Fondo Fotográfico de la Universidad de Navarra and took part in the opening of the Museo Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, in 2015. He is currently director of the CGAC (Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea) in Santiago de Compostela. Jorge Ribalta Jorge Ribalta (Barcelona, 1963) is artist, essayist and independent curator. He has individually exhibited, among others, in Zabriskie gallery New York (1994, 2000, 2005) and Paris (1996), Estrany-De la Mota (Barcelona, 1998), Casa sin Fin (Cáceres and Madrid, 2010, 2012) and Angels Barcelona (Barcelona, 2012-13). He’s taken part in numerous collective exhibitions. Among them: “Any 90: distància Zero” (Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona, 1994), “New Photography 10” (MOMA, New York, 1994), “Fragments” (MACBA, Barcelona, 1996) and “Sets and Situations” (MOMA, New York, 2000). He’s been curator of exhibitions as: “Domini Públic” (Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona, 1994), “El Carrer. Joan Colom a la Sala Aixelà, 1961” (MNAC, Barcelona, 1999), “Joan Colom. Fotografías de Barcelona”, 1958-1964 (Ministerio de Cultura-Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, 2004), “Jo Spence. Más allá de la imagen perfecta. Fotografía, subjetividad, antagonismo” (MACBA, Barcelona, 2005), and more recently “Aún no. Sobre la reinvención del documento y la crítica de la modernidad” (2015) also in Museo Reina Sofía. He’s published the books Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografía en el pensamiento artístico contemporáneo (MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, re-edited by Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003), Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre la fotografía (Gustavo Gili, 2004), or El movimiento de la fotografía obrera, 1926-1939. Ensayos y documentos (Museo Reina Sofía, 2011); among others. He’s been responsible of the Publics programme of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) between 1999 and 2009.


Juan Carlos Rico Juan Carlos Rico holds a PhD in Architecture from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid and in Art from the Faculty of History at the Universidad de Salamanca. He is a sociologist by the UNED and studied History of Philosophy and Science, UNED. He’s museum curator. He coordinates a multidisciplinary team to investigate the exhibition fact and its relation to space, which has been reflected in several publications. According to the programmes of the European Union, the ICOM (International Council of Museums) and ILAM (Instituto Latinoamericano de Museos). He conducts workshops in various European and American universities, of which he’s besides usual teacher. Yolanda Romero Yolanda Romero, born in Granada in 1962, has a degree in Art History from the Universidad de Granada and is Head of the Division of conservatorship of the Banco de España in Madrid. She has been the director of the Centro José Guerrero of Granada, since its founding in 2000 until February 2015. Previously, she directed the exhibition hall of the Palacio de los Condes de Gabia and the Collection of Contemporary Art of the Diputación de Granada between 1989 and 1999. Between 2001 and 2014, she joined the management team of Art and Thought project of the Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, a long-term project that relates art to culture and society. In 2005 she was elected president of the Asociación de Directores de Arte Contemporáneo de España (ADACE), position for which she was reelected and occupies today. Among the exhibition projects addressed or curated in recent years they’re those dedicated to Soledad Sevilla, Helen Levitt, Richard Misrach, Richard Avedon, Judith Barry, William Wegman, Narelle Jubelin, Basilio Martin Patino, Antoni Muntadas, David Lamelas, Rogelio López Cuenca, Dora García, Bernard Rudofsky, or Jorge Ribalta; among many others. She has participated in numerous juries and awards and taught at various Spanish universities. Tomás Ruiz Rivas Tomás Ruiz-Rivas (Madrid, 1962). Writer and visual artist. He’s founder of Ojo Atómico, now named Antimuseo. His work has two foci: institutional critique and analysis of conflicts in the Spanish art system. As an artist, Tom Lavin (his heteronym) works on the Spanish identity and historical memory. Antimuseo is a research project on the connections between art, urban space and museum. Its work blurs the boundaries between theory and practice and focuses on the social processes that constitute the work of art, as well as in the analysis of the structure and limits of the art institution. Montserrat Soto Spanish artist who mainly works photography and installations, particularly in the form of series. Working on two lines of research, the landscape through travel and art spaces. Some of her most notable series are “Archivos de archivos” y “Doom City”. Among her most notable exhibitions, she has shown her work in “Tiempo Roto”, Galería Juana de Aizpuru in 2013, “Paisaje Secreto” in Museo Patio Herreriano of Valladolid, and “Tracking Madrid” in Museo Reina Sofía of Madrid in 2005.


Berta Sureda Degree in Art History. She has extensive experience in cultural management. She was coordinator of exhibitions at the Instituto de Promoción Urbanística (1988), the Olimpíada Cultural (1989-1992) and of scenic activities at Festival de Tardor and Festival de les Arts de Barcelona. In 1992 she joined the CCCB as coordinator and head of the Exhibition department and later as director of the department of Cultural Services. At the head of Entidad Autónoma de Difusión Cultural, she created a programme to support creators and entities, new lines of support for research, creation and dissemination of artistic projects and promoted the network of creation centers in Catalonia. From June 2008 to 2015 she was director of Public Activities of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Berta Sureda is Commissioner of Culture in the Barcelona Council since 2015, and directs the Institut de Cultura of Barcelona.

Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an ...

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