The Relational Museum of Catalan Art by Manuel Borja-Villel

BarcelonaThe signing as museum advisor of Manuel Borja-Villel by the Generalitat a couple of years ago raised a storm in the sector. He was unable to complete the planned expansion project for the National Museum of Art of Catalonia (MNAC), and the heads of some of the country's museums, in a climate of institutional precariousness, criticized his salary and, above all, accused him of containing more politics than art in his projects. Manuel Borja-Villel had left the Reina Sofía amid criticism from the right and, at the same time, was considered one of the most important museum directors in the world. He arrived in a Catalonia with a small, poorly equipped museum system, made up of chapels and chapels. Controversy was afoot. After two years of work, finding accomplices and closed doors, and a conference on museums, this Friday Borja-Villel presents the exhibition that is the fruit of his work over these years. Curiously, Fabulous landscapes It is ahead of the MNAC in using the Victoria Eugenia Pavilion as an exhibition space. And with the minimum necessary setup, the exhibition coexists with some elements of the municipal Three Kings' Parade, including the star that guided the Three Wise Men.

Many of the protagonists of the exhibition, which will be open until October 5, are those without a voice, visibility, or history. Borja-Villel brings them to light by calling on a string of contemporary artists to respond to works and stories from institutions like the MNAC itself. For example, Lola Lasurt has refused to paint Consuelo Jiménez, Nonell's teenage lover and model, who died in November 1905 when, during a storm, the shack where she lived fell on her and her grandmother. But she has painted, with a disturbing air, Nonell and other men who surrounded him. Likewise, the duo El Palomar criticizes how the figure of Ismael Smith has been museumized and how institutions have turned his project Background, wardrobe and figure by Ismael Smith in a topic. "Transfeminist reading and queer that we proposed has been used without credit and exploited as a label by the same institutions that had condemned Smith's work to the obscurity of their warehouses [...]. The same institutions continue to hijack Smith's works, denying us several loans and preventing us from deploying our curatorial vision," they state in a manifesto that can be seen among some of Smith's works purchased at auctions. Another of the protagonists of the exhibition is the Brazilian Aline Motta, who presents a video with which she wants to be the video with which she wants to be sold into slavery, to give her a worthy posterity.

At the foot of the MNAC, Borja-Villel's exhibition represents "the tools to question the encyclopedic museum," as he himself says. "The paradigm shift to view the museum from a different perspective is based on the fact that it must be a situated museum, which must take into account the place from which it speaks," he explains. This means the physical location, Montjuïc and the 1929 Universal Exposition, which continued the line of those of 1887 and 1888. Likewise, the desire to understand the museum not as a place of "representation," but of "active listening," and as "a place of encounter and friction." "We always say that museums should attract people, and I think we should abandon museums, not so they disappear, but rather so we can abandon the epistemological model of museums," he warns. "More than a national museum, we should talk about a relational museum, in the sense that we must understand that one type of relationship is within relationships and a fixed, closed identity. Cultures where it is understood that any type of knowledge is inherited knowledge; therefore, we will all speak with things that belong to others, always, and that will continually be different.

The historical works can be seen inside cubicles in museum conditions, and the contemporary ones outside. The thematic blocks that make up the tour address themes such as the landscape, including the characteristic paintings by Urgell and other lesser-known ones by Rusiñol of the quarries that were in Montjuïc. Regarding the gypsies who lived in poverty, Daniel G. Andújar presents a work made with an AI that becomes racist in the line Trump's policies, for example. Borja-Villel's goal with this reflection on the landscape is to break with romantic stereotypes, bring to light the mountain's harsh past, and also questions the idea of empty territories, which colonial powers took advantage of to claim land. As a counterpoint to the Urgells, you can see a gigantic work by Dan Lie hanging from the ceiling, evoking a landscape with dyed fabrics and bouquets of turmeric and aromatic plants. "The work will change, because the artist suggests that life includes death; it is a cycle, time," says Borja-Villel. You can also see the photographs with which Paula Artés has continued her research in Guatemala on the Castor platform and Florentino Pérez's businesses.

Another area is dedicated to universal exhibitions, through which the idea of nationhood is forged, and the construction of the Columbus Monument in Barcelona. Thus, the Guatemalan artist Marilyn Boror Bor is scheduled to make a performance In this setting, a bricklayer will cement him to a pedestal. But before the paste stops him, he will leave, because his goal is to pay homage to ancestral nature. Also featured in this setting is the controversial figure of Víctor Balaguer, who was Minister of Overseas Affairs, and the General Exposition of the Philippine Islands he organized in Madrid in 1887, during which some of the Filipinos exhibited at the Crystal Palace died.

The Palace of Missions at the 1929 Universal Exposition

In connection with the 1929 Universal Exposition in Barcelona, ​​the exhibition delves into the Palace of Missions, the remains of which are preserved by the Capuchins of Sarrià in a small Andean Amazonian museum. This shows how these missionaries went to areas where, amidst the rubber tapping, brutal exploitation of the indigenous people took place. "The Capuchins cared for them, but at the same time they converted them; in the sense that they took away from them the knowledge of the land and the wisdom of medicinal herbs, and left them without tools."

Further on, you can see drawings by the Austrian Ceija Stojka: her mother saved her from the Nazi genocide, but she, who had repressed her Romero origins, lost a son to an overdose. At that moment, she felt she hadn't been able to do for her son what his mother had done for her, and she began to tell her story. And nearby is a string of models of the small houses where some of the women from the Association of Roma Women of Sant Adrià de Besòs live, which will disappear to make way for protected housing.

The final section of the tour is dedicated to the colonies, with cases related to Morocco, represented by the Trafricants collective's search for how the sculptor Eudald Serra went to prisons to be able to take portraits with which he constructed seemingly idyllic family images. It also talks about the process of bringing the Snowflake to Catalonia, represented by a video by Antoni Muntadas, and how the left-wing architects of Gatcpac, and Josep Antoni Coderch, never questioned where the wood they used to make their furniture came from. "We're not saying they're racist, but they were in a system where no one questioned the origin of the materials," says Borja-Villel, who has worked with Lluís Alexandre Casanovas and Beatriz Martínez.

The exhibition has a second location at the Palau Moja, where you can see, among other works, the Güell Variations by Jorge Ribalta. Fabulous landscapes It cost around 1 million euros, including the installation, the production of 80% of the works on display, loans, and salaries of those involved.