Valentín Roma is the new director of Macba

BarcelonaTime heals all wounds. Art historian Valentín Roma (Ripollet, 1970) is the new director of Macba after winning the competition convened by the museum. Roma, who is the current director of La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, thus returns to Macba after the downfall of the exhibition La bèstia i el sobirà, during which he was dismissed as chief curator of the museum. According to the competition rules, Roma will be the director of Macba for five years, with the possibility of renewal for three more years. The General Council of the Consortium of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona appointed him this afternoon unanimously, after his project obtained the best evaluation in terms of merits. The incorporation will be effective in the coming weeks. According to the statement made public by the museum, in its conclusions the evaluation committee, which includes representatives from the Barcelona City Council, the Generalitat and the Ministry of Culture, highlights "the solidity of the project presented by the candidate, as well as the coherence and rigor of his professional career, which will allow him to lead the institution with intellectual ambition, dynamism and relevance". The salary will be 115,000 euros gross per year.

From the second origin. Arts in Catalonia 1950-1977Del segon origen. Arts a Catalunya 1950-1977.

Roma, who takes over from Elvira Dyangani Ose, has prevailed over three finalists, all of them men, out of 21 candidates. In fact, his name had been rumoured for weeks as the favourite. Valentín Roma and Paul B. Preciado arrived at Macba in 2014 as external advisors to the then director, Bartomeu Marí, to "reset" the institution. Later, he took on the role of chief curator. During the months he held the position, he was the curator of an exhibition of the collection and others by artists and authors such as Osvaldo Lamborghini, Eugeni Bonet, Sergi Aguilar, and Javier Codesal. In 2015, his dispute with the museum, and that of Preciado, who was head of public programmes, ended with an agreement under which they received 50,537 euros each, and the museum thanked and recognised their work and professional value during the time they worked there.

In his time at the head of La Virreina, Roma has curated exhibitions on Alexander Kluge, Paula Rego, Exit Photography Group, Susan Sontag, August Sander, Marguerite Duras, Barbara Hammer, and John Berger, among others. On the other hand, he was the curator of the first Catalan pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale, La comunitat inconfessable

. As an author, he has published the novel trilogy El enfermero de Lenin (2017), Retrato del futbolista adolescente (2019), and El capitalista simbólico (2022), all published by Periférica, as well as the essays Rostros (2011) and Diecinueve apagones y un destello (2021).

The election of the new director has been surrounded by some uproar. On Tuesday, the Catalan Association of Art Critics (ACCA), the Association of Museology Professionals of Catalonia (AMC), and the Assembly Platform of Artists of Catalonia (PAAC), with the support of the museum's works council, made public a statement against the terms of the competition. According to these organizations, they did not guarantee "the minimum conditions required for transparency and free competition," and they regretted that the meeting to review them, which they requested with the museum's manager, Eduard Vicente, was not held. They also questioned the independence of the evaluation committee, formed by the artist Francesc Torres; the president of the Sorigué Foundation, Anna Vallès; and the gallerist Joan-Anton Maragall, and that this same committee did not have international members. Regarding the members of the jury, they denounced that they are advisors with a voice but no vote. One of the most controversial points of the terms is that English was not a requirement, and the ACCA, AMC, and PAAC considered that it should be an "essential" requirement for candidates. On the other hand, they also believe that the criteria for the jury's deliberation should be made public.