Imma Prieto, new Director of Es Baluard

The Fundació Es Baluard presents the new director of Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma, Imma Prieto. This procedure has been developed with the aim of following Best Practices in museums and art centers, which has determined that it is an independent jury of experts who has chosen the best project for the museum.

The Valuation Commission of this process, convened on March 21 by the Es Baluard Foundation and which received a total of 24 applications, has been formed by Ferran Barenblit, Director of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona MACBA, Rosa Ferré, Artistic Director of Matadero Madrid, Karin Ohlenschläger, Activities Director of Laboral, the artist Daniel García Andújar, the independent curator Neus Cortés, the cultural manager specialized in contemporary art Eva Mulet and the independent curator and former Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Enrique Juncosa.

In the first public act since the reconstitution of the Board of Trustees of the Fundació Es Baluard and the renewal of its members on October 1, the new president of the Board of Trustees, Catalina Cladera, has pointed out that "now we also premiered a new cycle in the museum , led by Imma Prieto, a new face at the forefront of this choral project, a generator of culture that has managed to connect with the Mallorcan people and with the international artistic field".

The director Imma Prieto has defended at a press conference that the museum must be considered "as an open space at the service of the city, understood as a generator of knowledge and capable of activating the critical spirit". In this sense, she explained that the main objectives include the exceptional and internationalization of the museum.

Regarding her museum project, Prieto has pointed out that the first line of research for Es Baluard, entitled "Collection. Archive and Visual Memory", is conceived as a way of "relating museum funds and different archives with cultural theories of our contemporaneity, which will build a historiographic network with cultural institutions and associations of the Balearic Islands, rewriting the story of the Collection itself".

The second line, "City. Art and Communities", aims to establish a link between image, urban planning, society and theories of culture. In this way, it is intended to "map the plurality of visual and social realities from urban representations, population flows and tourism, understanding the city as a living organism in constant transformation".

Finally, the new Director of the museum has expressed that "Imaginary and visuals", the third line of the project, is constituted from the "reinsertion of the imaginary in processes where artistic and social knowledge intersect, defining imaginary that range from theory to practice". In this way, the objective is "approaching historical social and narrative problems thinking about the future".

Imma Prieto replaces Nekane Aramburu (March 2013 - March 2019) and is incorporated with a four-year contract, extendable for two more years and with the possibility of being extended for successive years after the end of this six-year period. The remuneration of the director will be 60,000 euros gross per year.

Prieto is an independent curator, writer and professor of contemporary art and new media at the EU-Eram of the Universitat de Girona. As curator, she has carried out exhibition projects at national and international level  such as TempArtSpace - NYC; Palazzo Ca'Tron - Venecia; RAER-Roma, MUCA-ROMA México DF; Bienal del Istmo Centroamericano - Guatemala; MNAC - Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya; Fundación Miró, Fabra i Coats; ​​Palau Virreina - Centre de la Imatge; Fundació Vilacasas, Arts Santa Mònica; MEIAC-Badajoz; TEA - Tenerife; ARTIUM - Vitoria; Bòlit - Girona, among others.

She has collaborated in different catalogs and research books and writes regularly on the La Vanguardia Cultura/s supplement and on the A*Desk and Campo de relámpagos digital platforms. She has been manager of the European research group ELAA (European Live Art Archive 2008-2012), formed by the Universitat de Girona, the University of Oxford and the residence of artists Glaugair in Berlin.

Likewise, she also collaborates with other international research groups such as Émergence de l’art vidéo en Europa (1960-1980), formed by the Université Paris 8. Her professional practice is developed through a dialogue between curatorship, research and writing, and in 2017 she made her first documentary 'Eco de Primera Mort' and in 2018 she was awarded the International Prize for art critic GAC.