Campos magnéticos.
Escritos de arte y política

• Day: September 24, 2021
• Schedule: 7.00 pm
• Location: Auditori
• Free activity with prior registration and limited places

Manuel Borja-Villel presents the essay Campos magnéticos. Escritos de arte y política, edited by Arcàdia editorial. This literary meeting is part of the public program «Llegim juntxs la contemporaneïtat», in which we call for collective reflection on issues that run through not only contemporary art but also various issues of our time.

With a format of presentation cycle, in #LetsReadTogether, we present new publications and recent publications with the presence of the authors, to open the debate to the public and to share views on the proposed approaches. Once the presentation is over, the writers will sign copies of the books.

Presented by: Luisa Espino, Head of the art section of El Cultural magazine

Synopsis: Art and politics are strongly interconnected fields, they are attracted and repelled, they draw continuities and cause ruptures, and the essays collected in this volume are subject to the tension between these forces.

Whether as a reflection on the contemporary condition, on artistic practice or on the limits and potential of the museum, each of the writings is situated in time and space, and all of them reflect the intellectual trajectory of Manuel Borja-Villel at the head of important museum institutions, as well as some of his curatorial concerns as head of numerous public exhibitions or programs over the past thirty years.

An advocate of the hybridization and transfer of knowledge in the face of the watertight compartmentalization of knowledge and its form of organization, this book is committed to extradisciplinary research and the interrelationship of multiple fields. And above all, it is an invitation to reflect on art, its organizations and its actors.

Manuel Borja-Villel. He received B.A. in the History of Art from the Faculty of Geography and History at the University of Valencia in 1980. In 1981­–1982 he was named Special Student at Yale University and between 1981 and 1983 he was awarded a Fulbright grant. In 1987 he obtained a Master of Philosophy from the Department of Art History at the City University of New York. In 1988–­1989 he was also awarded a grant from the Kress Foundation Fellowship for Art History and, in 1989, he received a PhD in the Department of Art History from the Graduate School at the City University of New York. He has also written about modern and contemporary art.

He was director of the Antoni Tàpies Foundation, in Barcelona, from its opening, in June 1990, to July 1998, where he organised exhibitions such as Els límits del museu (The Limits of the Museum) and La ciutat de la gen (The City of the People), as well as shows featuring the work of artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Brassaï, Marcel Broodthaers, Lygia Clark, Hans Haacke and Krzysztof Wodiczko, among others.

From July 1988 to January 2008, he was director of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), presenting noteworthy exhibitions, including those devoted to Vito Acconci, El Lissitzky, Öyvind Fahlström, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Robert Frank, David Goldblatt, Luís Gordillo, Raymond Hains, Richard Hamilton, William Kentridge, Perejaume, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Martha Rosler and Antoni Tàpies, among others. Some thesis exhibitions organised in the aforementioned exhibition included: Antagonismos. Casos de studio (Antagonisms. Case Studies); Campos de fuerzas (Force Fields); Arte y Utopía. La acción restringida (Art and Utopia. Restricted Action); Un teatro sin teatro (A Theatre without Theatre) and Bajo la bomba. El jazz de la guerra de imágenes transatlántica (Be-Bomb. The Transatlantic War of Images and All that Jazz) 1946-1956.

Since January 2008 he has been director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), where, to date, he has programmed exhibitions such as Mario Merz. El tiempo es mudo (2019), Poéticas de la democracia. Imágenes y contraimágenes de la transición (2018), Dadá ruso. 1914-1924 (2018), Piedad y el terror en Picasso. Camino a Guernica (2017), Lee Lozano. Forzar la máquina (2017), Marcel Broodthaers. Una retrospectiva (2016), Ficciones y territorios, arte para pensar la nueva razón del mundo (2016), Aún no. Sobre la reinvención del documental y la crítica del modernismo (2015), Un saber realmente útil (2014) y Playgrounds. Reinventar la plaza, (2014), and numerous others.