The Instituto Cervantes Museum Director Lecture, Manuel Borja-Villel (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia), Towards a Situated Museum

We often imagine an artistic construct in which the other speaks with us, when that is not really the case. It is not enough to represent the other; we must seek out forms of mediation that are simultaneously examples and concrete practices of new forms of solidarity and relation. This implies replacing the linear, one-way, and exclusive narration with one that is plural and rhizomatic, where differences are not only annulled but interlaced. It also implies transgressing established genres and canons, as well as extending the artistic experience beyond contemplation and including projects that are not limited to the context of the art world or reduced to established institutional settings. If the main objective of cultural and even artistic institutions is to seek beyond, seeking out innovation and what emerges anywhere in order to tame it and transform it into merchandise, then the new institutional sphere should have an open and explicitly political dimension. It should be open to this multiplicity, simultaneously protecting its interests and favoring ethical, political, and creative surpluses that are antagonistic in a shared space. We often imagine an artistic construct in which the other speaks with us, when that is not really the case. It is not enough to represent the other; we must seek out forms of mediation that are simultaneously examples and concrete practices of new forms of solidarity and relation. This implies replacing the linear, one-way, and exclusive narration with one that is plural and rhizomatic, where differences are not only annulled but interlaced. It also implies transgressing established genres and canons, as well as extending the artistic experience beyond contemplation and including projects that are not limited to the context of the art world or reduced to established institutional settings. If the main objective of cultural and even artistic institutions is to seek beyond, seeking out innovation and what emerges anywhere in order to tame it and transform it into merchandise, then the new institutional sphere should have an open and explicitly political dimension. It should be open to this multiplicity, simultaneously protecting its interests and favoring ethical, political, and creative surpluses that are antagonistic in a shared space. 

Manual Borja Villel's exhibitions include;

• Nancy Spero. Dissidances; 
• Deimantas Narkevičius. The Unanimous Life; 
• Mixed Use, Manhattan; 
• Georges Vantongerloo. A Longing for the Infinity; 
• Drifts and Derivations; 
• Paul Thek; 
• New Realisms: 1957-1962; 
• Miralda. De gustibus non disputandum; 
• Martín Ramírez. Reframing Confinement; 
• León Ferrari and Mira Schendel: The Frenzied Alphabet; 
• ATLAS. How to carry the world on one’s back?; 
• Juan Muñoz. Retrospective; 
• Thomas Schütte. Hindsight; 
• :VAL DEL OMAR overflow; 
• alighiero boetti. game plan; 
• Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos; 
• Elena Asins. Fragments of Memory; 
• Specters of Artaud; 
• Nacho Criado. Collaborating Agents; 
• Encounters with the 1930s; 
• Concrete Invention. Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection; 
• Cristina Iglesias: Metonymy; 
• Cildo Meireles; 
• Richard Hamilton; 
• Dalí. All of the poetic suggestions and all of the plastic possibilities.

The core of his programme in the Museo is also represented in the development and reorganisation of the Collection – the systematic approach to a series of thesis exhibitions and the creation of a Public Activities area as well as, in general, the start-up of an international museum network. Moreover, under his supervision a Law for the Museo has been approved.

He also served as director of the Antoni Tàpies Foundation in Barcelona from 1990 to 1998, and from 1988 to 2008, as 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.