Museums
In the summer of 2024, I was invited to participate in the seminar Artists’ Archives: Tools for Research in Museums, led by art historians and curators Agar Ledo and Juan de Nieves. The seminar was organized by the Museum of Pontevedra, and took place on July 7, 2024. The organizers described the seminar’s theme as … Continued
El interés que me despertó la lectura de este librito en la edición alemana me movió a proponer que fuese traducido al castellano, con tan buena fortuna que acabé siendo yo misma la encargada de realizar la traducción, que apareció en español en la colección Ex(it)Libris, de Exit Editorial, en 2024. «Lo curatorial, de la … Continued
At La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, the event After the Archive: Artwork and Document featured a roundtable discussion titled “Research / Musealization / Market Value,” during which I moderated a conversation between Brazilian collector Pedro Barbosa, art historian Manuel Borja-Villel, and Madrid-based art historian and gallery owner José de la Mano.
The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and the Museu Picasso in Barcelona organized an international symposium on archival practice in 21st-century art, bringing together archivists, curators, artists, historians, and researchers from the local and international art scenes. The symposium took place over two days and focused on two essential, overlapping actions: the task of ARCHIVING, … Continued
“…Based on these reflections, the need was seen to give physical form to a hybrid, dynamic and social space, whose layout was sufficiently flexible to allow the development of certain functions of other spaces without being limited only to one: a classroom / a lounge / a projection room / an assembly room / an … Continued
“…The documentary collection Queer Archive? (…) set out to map and document the struggles of gender activist communities in Madrid in the 1990s so as to prevent contagion and promote safe sex, especially given the dramatic lack of institutional policies tackling the health crisis. Researchers and activists Sejo Carrascosa, Lucas Platero, Andrés Senra and Fefa … Continued
Session No. 13 of the series of talks and presentations What a Book Can Do, organized by Anna Pahissa at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, was dedicated to discussing Apariciones, an artist’s book by Enric Farrés Duran published by the museum itself. Apariciones had been published in conjunction with Farrés Duran’s exhibition Cosas que … Continued
Available on the A*Desk – Critical Thinking blog (https://a-desk.org/en/magazine/temporary-art-review-and-march-a-journal-of-art-strategy/) in English, Spanish and Catalan. Partially republished in March – A Journal of Art and Strategy (https://march.international/adesk-interview-by-mela-davila-freire/), May 2021. “…The slowdown in the pace of activity has been radical and prolonged, leaving many of us on the brink of bankruptcy and, what’s even worse, without clear … Continued
A very brief text on the current position of archives in museum institutions, which appeared in the publication Sich mit Sammlungen anlegen. Gemeinsame Dinge und alternative Archiven (Berlin: Verlag De Gruyter, 2020), edited by Martina Griesser, Nora Sternfeld, and Luisa Ziaja.
“Institutions as a Way of Life was a research project organized by Bernhard Garnicnic, Lucie Kolbcand Jamie Allen in the Critical Media Lab of the Institute of Experimental Design and MediacCultures, which is attached to the School of Arts of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, in Basel. The aim of IWL was briefly … Continued
The book The Museum of the Future: 43 Contributions to the Discussion on the Future of the Museum was published in 1970 so as to present some ideas on the expected and desired development of this institution. Fifty years later, in 2020, a “revision”, which took the same idea as a starting point was edited … Continued
1980 signalled an important moment of change at multiple levels. Politically, Western societies undertook a deep conservative turn, while market philosophy spread relentlessly to all walks of life, including culture and art, rapidly affected likewise by the “logic of late capitalism” enunciated by Jameson. In the arts, a number of phenomena coexisted during this decade. … Continued
The seminar The Boundary Condition: About the Archive and Its Limits, directed by Maite Muñoz, was one of the events marking the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Study Center at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona – MACBA, in 2018 The aim was to examine the factors that shape the difficult definition of the … Continued
«…El arranque de los fondos documentales de La Panera coincidió con la cuarta edición de la Biennal Leandre Cristòfol, celebrada en 2004. Aquella fue la edición de la Biennal en la que por primera vez se incluyeron publicaciones de artista en la exposición…»
«…And it is not often the case that the collector’s activities are linked to those of the editor, although both, in essence, devote themselves to quite similar work: at the end of the day, what is an editor if not a “collector” of content carefully ordered and chosen from abundant material to be included in a particular context…»
«A partir de 1999, la idea de crear un centro de documentación que reuniese no solo publicaciones de referencia, sino también libros de artista, publicaciones especiales y todo tipo de material documental, pasó a formar parte de los planes de crecimiento del Museo, al mismo tiempo que el interés por la documentación vinculada al arte contemporáneo…»
«…The first magazine, entitled WC, which referred to the famous Fontaine (1917) by Marcel Duchamp, was a collective project that spanned five issues and adopted the format of an envelope which included wood engravings, collages, graphic compositions, foldable leaflets and texts-manifestos…»
Artist Miralda’s archive encompasses souvenirs, fragments of his art works, books, cooking and eating artefacts from all over the world, artist’s publications, contributions by visitors to his many interactive installations, photographs, press clippings… In 2011, Miralda requested the MACBA Study Center to help him create a database which would manage such a complex pattern of … Continued
This text was published in the 10th volume of the “Impasse” series – published by La Panera in Lleida –, which was edited by Glòria Picazo and bears the exhaustive title of Artist’s Books, Special Editions, Object Magazines, Editorial Projects, Independent Editions, Publications Specials, Limited Editions, Desktop Publishing, Artist Editions, Digital Publications…
«Esta transformación, evidente sobre todo en prácticas como la performance, el happening, etc., ha tenido profundas consecuencias que llegan hasta la actualidad, en tanto que ha otorgado un nuevo estatus a la documentación que ilustra eventos creativos de esta índole, asimilándola a la “obra de arte” en muchos sentidos…»
MACBA created the Studies and Documentation Centre, which opened its doors in 2007, to promote the museum’s development by extending its scope of activity so as to foster research on and the analysis of contemporary artistic practices. The tasks of the Studies and Documentation Centre can be summarized as the collection, preservation, and dissemination of … Continued