Manuel Borja-Villel in Buenos Aires: The former director of the Reina Sofía "transformed the museum"

Today, Tuesday, at 3 p.m., the "Displacements" series organized by the Cultural Center of Spain in Buenos Aires (CCEBA), the Williams Foundation , the Project Office, the Moderno, Central Affair and La Escuelita will host a prominent figure from the art world: Manuel Borja–Villel .

Internationally recognized not only for his management of the Reina Sofía Museum , applauded by various groups and criticized by others, but his innovative vision and commitment to the transformation of museums have left no one indifferent in the art world.

"Displacements" opens a space for reflection and debate on curatorial practice and institutionalized models of artistic endeavor. But Borja Villel's presentation is even more disruptive: it invites us to inhabit the museum . This is the title of his presentation.

The meeting between Manuel Borja Villel and local curator Jimena Ferreiro seeks to reveal what it means to inhabit a museum. “ Inhabiting a museum implies that society appropriates it , understanding it as a space for institutional experimentation, that is, a place where our greatest desires and our worst horrors are negotiated. And, in doing so, we can invent other universes.” This is how he defines it.

In a very interesting reflection, among many others, Borja Villel says: “Exhibitions in art centers abound in terms such as decolonization, restitution, redistribution, right to refuse, performativity, etc. However, these same centers, regardless of the good faith of their managers, have great difficulty decolonizing their structures and illuminating alternative forms of organization .”

And he adds: “ It's not about entering the system, but about leaving it . Rather than arriving at the museum, we should encourage an exodus from it. Decolonizing doesn't merely mean restoring. It means mending and healing. Reparation cannot come from those who caused the damage. It's the people who have suffered dispossession who will decide what to do and how to do it. It's not enough to renovate the museum. The most important thing is to imagine, from its ruins, other stories, mechanisms, and forms of organization.”

This is the conversation we had with the Spanish curator one day before his presentation.

–In recent decades, there's been a lot of talk about creating museums closer to communities, but no one has stepped forward. We haven't found any marked disruptions in the narrative. Where do we start to transform this?

–Yes, it's true that for several decades now, there have been a series of stories, narratives that have to do with decolonization, with identity, with reaching out to communities, with thinking about spaces for dialogue, or whatever we want to call them. This, very often, remains merely in the discourse, in the statements, in the story, but it doesn't change the institutions. In fact, we see that in the market—which is voracious and absorbs absolutely everything—increasingly, at the major fairs, themes that have to do with what we're talking about predominate, with Afro-descendant or indigenous artists predominating. Remember that one of the prides of Adriano Pedrosa, the director of the last edition of the Venice Art Biennale, was that 85% of the artists presented had never been there before or were not of European origin. The Venice Art Biennale was about not stepping out of line, and it reflects this quite a bit. That's there and has a life of its own, it has interpretations, it's not something dead. But as a museum director, and now in this “Museu Habitat” (Inhabited Museum) program, which I direct, my interest is always to question institutions.

We know, since Deleuze and Guattari, that there is no revolutionary or resistance process where institutions can have radical autonomy, or where they can be radically transformed, if there is no substitutionary process. For Deleuze and Guattari, it's not about revolution first and then changing institutions; rather, it's about everything. This often doesn't happen in the art system, especially in museums, as the most representative element of a system. Why? Sometimes because the system's capacity for absorption is very broad, or because we believe that statements change things, but also because we idealize people and (artistic) collectives. It's not about imagining that curators, commissioners, and artists can just do things. Culture is a battlefield, as the far right understands perfectly well. In fact, in Spain, it's jokingly said that the right reads Gramsci more than the left. So, in that system, in that cultural battle, some are statements, but it also has to do with structural policies and micropolitics. At a structural level, institutions—think of the United States—used to have the freedom to create exhibitions and speeches, as long as the institutions themselves were not changed.

I prefer the question of micropolitics. Very often, we want to work in communities, in a horizontal way. But we also have a certain idea of competitiveness, of originality, where we want to share but also want to be the first. Therefore, this micropolitics exerts violence on the bodies that exist there. In my text "Autonomous and Connected," one of the proposals is to democratize institutions. On many levels, this work is essential if we don't want all of this to become mere rhetoric, a new screen for a system that has been constantly changing since the 16th century.

–What are audiences looking for when they enter a museum today, apart from radical activists who attack works of art?

–First, we should make a distinction. A museum isn't a single thing. A museum is a highly refined power structure in the Western world since the 18th century, clearly with all the transformations that fine arts museums, encyclopedic museums, modern art museums, biennials, etc. have undergone. These are structures that emerged with major expos, starting in 1851 with the London Expo, and their mission was propaganda, to reflect the Western world as a civilization, whose reasoning was universal and should apply to everyone; and it was also the idea of promoting a specific, sequential, progressive time as a way to achieve progress. This Eurocentric reasoning is very convenient. And it also helps separate it from violence of colonial origin, such as Palestine, for example, and doing so gives the impression that the structural problems of a given system may be aberrations, but overcome. In that context, the museum institution is a highly refined element and is part of a privileged structure. But it's not a closed thing either; it changes and is occupied by people. This occupation can have one outcome or another. These radicalized controversies show that society is more complex and there are many audiences.

–What are these audiences looking for, beyond the standard audience within the art system?

–I would say they seek essential elements, for example, the museum as an exercise in radical imagination. In an era in which it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, as Margaret Thatcher said, having places where we can imagine other ways of life, of coexistence, of relating to the non-human is very important. It's also true that market pressure is on the cultural industries. There's the tourism industry, made for consumption. Consumption is the complete opposite of radical imagination; it's having a brand, it's recognizing, not knowing. It's going to a museum and seeing a Picasso, and that's it. But it's not about thinking about what that Picasso work is trying to tell us. Does it speak to us about the Republic, Vietnam, or Gaza? Does it challenge us? That tension exists. There's a tension between a system that pressures consumption and groups of people who are seeking something else. I think this exercise in radical imagination is important. That's why museums have a central role and an ethical responsibility that didn't exist in other eras.

And another fundamental element in museums, in a broad sense, is that they are a place where the horrors of our society's tragedies can be negotiated. This is what classical Greek theater did, where catharsis occurred, just as it happens in other cultures. There are many different initiatives coming from different groups of people. They are the ones who look to the art world for hope. The third element is agency, which means precisely inhabiting the museum. Audiences must make the museum's stories their own. How is this done? As with oral tradition. Orality leads those who hear a story to repeat it, and when they repeat it, they make it their own and change it, and generate a collective knowledge that belongs to everyone. Thus, the museum is that place of refuge where audiences can build their own agency and their own memory, and this third aspect is very important.

This implies doing things that Western encyclopedic museums cannot do. These museums are based on facts, documents, objects, etc. But there are other audiences that speak, think, and imagine. Is it possible to read a history that hasn't been written? Is it possible to remember that which didn't happen? For example, the histories of people of African descent that haven't been able to be written, or those of peoples who died from genocide or a structurally violent system. Can a descendant of slaves who had no history reconstruct that which hasn't existed? These elements break with the structure of the Western museum based on the representation of a single history, in which those who are not part of it are condemned to nonexistence. These devices are too limited for a world that has become very complex. In my opinion, this transformation is what society is demanding of museum institutions today.

– What did your experience at the Reina Sofía Museum contribute to this new narrative?

–To this, I have to add my work at the Tàpies Foundation and this “Museu habitacité” project in Barcelona. This year, first of all, at the Reina Sofía, what we did was democratize the institution. One of the things that make change impossible are the administrative procedures, which are like a straitjacket. What we did was achieve a greater degree of management autonomy, its own laws, and instead of depending on the Ministry of Culture, it had greater flexibility, a high level of democracy, and very little interference from political powers. During those years of management, we achieved an exponential increase in visitors, an increase in public resources, although not spectacular, plus the decision to collaborate radically with other groups. Another element is understanding that it is a public, European space, and that it responds to ideas that have their origins in an encyclopedic museum. We had the opportunity to work with other groups and sustain ourselves through solidarity and collaboration with groups that are radically approaching the museum. In this sense, the Museum on the Net was created, and collaborations were established with the Southern Conceptualisms Network, with the International (European institutions), with the Institute of Radical Imagination, which was created within the museum itself, and with the Commons Foundation, thus creating, with all of them, another form of governance that relates to the commons. An institution is public, but it has nothing to do with the commons. This made significant progress with a study center and an activities program.

The third point had more to do with the artistic aspect. An effort was made in the Collection to situate the Reina Sofía in a specific place. It's a museum located in a specific time, in a very specific art system: the Spanish one. In that sense, it's clear that it's the great museum of the Transition, what it meant in Spain, with its art system that shaped a series of ideas in which some artists appeared and others didn't. It involved recognizing historical memory, working with exile. When I arrived at the Reina Sofía, there were practically no works by exiled artists. And, on the other hand, it's about going further, understanding that there is a language of the diaspora that doesn't respond to the parameters established by the academy. And all of this has to do with rethinking themes related to decolonization. All of this structured the Collection.

Another thing we did was consider the devices: we proposed an articulation between various elements, in an almost archaeological exercise, seeking to understand how the objects were explained at the time the artists created them, what their intentions were, and to consider those who saw them. Then, we contrasted that with the present. It's important to connect this historical exercise with the present. Another element is that the work of art has a life of its own, which is why it attracts us again and again. And yet I'm accused of being political and of not seeing works of art. But it's quite the opposite: art has a life of its own, which creates a tension between this historical investigation and the present, where the work of art doesn't quite fit into anything.

–In Europe, several museums discuss the topic of decolonization and migration, but they don't include the perspectives of either the colonized or migrants. How can we integrate them?

–In Europe and the United States, many issues relate to subaltern matters, but where are the subalterns? It's easier for a museum in the North to establish relationships with a community in Senegal than with the Senegalese themselves who live around the corner. And this is often the case, in Europe and the United States, that an exhibition brings artists from Ghana, Afghanistan, or wherever, but then the citizens of those countries are constantly denied visas. It's very complicated for them. There's no resistance possible, and there's no radical statement if it's not accompanied by an inclusive process of structural change. And in this sense, museums have to leave their comfort zones. Museums are specialists in creating structures that exclude.

–How can we inhabit the museum by bringing the most pressing issues of our time into public debate?

–As I was saying, the art system we find ourselves in should pride itself on being inclusive, but the real battle isn't so much about getting people into the museum, but rather about getting the museum to leave, in an ontological sense of the term, so that there's an exodus of certain categories, of certain concepts, and therefore for these elements—memory, history, radical imagination—to be truly possible. This situated conception of knowledge implies that we must be able to view it from the present. It's not an anachronism. It's important to understand that artists of the 1970s were in a certain system and that that system is still in place. The point isn't so much to point fingers and keep the debate emotional; the point is to understand that there's a structure that lives on in the present.

–Specifically, in art, we don't teach civic values, but rather the accumulation of works with an eye toward the market. How can we influence this pattern?

–Education is mutual, based on learning and antagonism. It's true that this museum structure is based on certain ideas. One of them is ownership, the accumulation of treasures. This way of understanding collections is completely at odds with learning other values. On the one hand, it's thinking that culture is about owning things. And it isn't. Culture is about giving, it's about learning, and consequently, this very strong idea that the museum is property, disguised as heritage, is a key impediment to change. As is the failure to assert the right to culture.