It's certainly curious to see Manuel Borja-Villel (Burriana, 1957) inside the Palau Moja, the headquarters of the Directorate General of Cultural Heritage, where he has worked for about two years. He is one of the professionals who, in recent years, has dedicated the most effort to ensuring that museums represent those who have no voice, those whose history has been denied, and who now moves through the residence of an aristocrat who dealt in slaves. But Borja plans to leave soon: he will finish his term as museum advisor to the Generalitat in December, two months before his contract expires, with a report on how to rethink the concept of a museum, which he will submit to the board of trustees of the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC). All the reflections and debates in this report are the result of the work Borja has carried out over the last two years with dozens of cultural agents and collectives, including IDRA, Transductores, and Entrar Afuera, and of a major exhibition whose main venue was the Palau Victoria Eugenia.

Let me state the obvious. UA museum is an academic institution designed to collect the best and most significant works of art.heThe fields of study and research that explain who we are, how we behave, how we organize ourselves, and what we believe, both religiously and ideologically and politically. In short, everything that has to do with what makes us human. The museum is, above all, its collection; without it, there is no museum, and this heritage is preserved, restored, studied, displayed, and explained to the public, who are, in the case of a publicly owned museum (the majority in our country), the owners of said heritage. Therefore, its mission is social from the outset and is an essential part of its nature. The museum is an idea, a concept like democracy, to give an endangered example, into which different content can be injected and different ways of managing it can be employed. These contents and ways of explaining them change over time; they are healthily analyzable, criticizable, and changeable ad infinitum. But if the very concept that frames them and their primary function is questioned, be it democracy or the museum, goodbye democracy and goodbye museum. Nor is it advisable that, due to mental confusion, a cultural, historical, narrative, and heritage institution be anything other than what it was created for. It has never been intended that a hospital should assume functions, let's say, of the Ministry of Finance. It's a matter of pure common sense, and yet now, in Catalonia, the art museum is expected to assume functions of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Social Equality, including the departments of Urban Planning and Housing, by adopting a "livable" museum model that no one knows for sure what the hell it means. All this thanks to Manolo Borja, an undisputed great professional of museography until he started believing his own press, "recovered" for Catalonia in the role of czar of its art museums (it was reported in the press, I'm not making this up) to reorient them without prior consultation with the directors of those institutions, who won their positions in public competitions based on the merit of their proposals. It was obvious that this idea by Jordi Martí (Secretary of State for Culture of the Spanish Government) was doomed to create problems, and it has. This also falls within the realm of common sense.

The 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.