Talk with Ferran Barenblit, director of MACBA – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

• Project Curating Institution is a public program based on discusions, lectures or seminars. We invited curators as well as directors of major international art institutions. We would like to discuss the strategies, projects and theoretical background which develop critical institution in the global circulation of art.

Ferran Barenblit

• studied Art History at the Universitat de Barcelona (1991) and Museology at New York University (1995). Since 2008 he has been director of CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo de la Comunidad de Madrid. CA2M opened in Móstoles, in the metropolitan area of Madrid, that year as a lively museum, in contact with its audiences and with an intense programme of exhibitions, public activities, education programmes and publications.
  • From 2002 to 2008 Barenblit was director of the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, a space dedicated by the Generalitat de Catalunya to contemporary art. During that time, the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica presented projects by national and international artists, such as Martí Anson, Alicia Framis, Christian Jankowski, Dora García, Jiri Kovanda, Maria Nordman, Esther Partegàs and Fernando Sánchez Castillo.
• In 1996–98 and 2000–1, Barenblit was the chief curator of Espai 13, at the Fundació Joan Miró, where he organised some fifteen exhibitions. In 2001 he was also the curator of the exhibition Ironia, held in the temporary exhibition galleries of the Fundació, and dedicated to the radical changes in art since the 1960s. From 1994 to 1996, he was assistant curator at The New Museum, New York, where he worked with the director Marcia Tucker.
  • Barenblit has lectured in universities and museums around the world, including: UC Berkeley; UC Santa Barbara; Arizona State University; Otis School of Art, Los Angeles; Cincinatti Arts Center; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Universidad de Buenos Aires; Universidad Santa Cecilia, São Paulo; Université Paris III - Sorbone Nouvelle; Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen; Venice Biennale; Townhouse, Cairo; Indian Art Fair, New Delhi; Association of Japanese Art Critics, Tokyo. He was guest lecturer for the Curating Contemporary Art programme of the Royal College of Art, London, from 2006 to 2011. In 2008 he was co-curator of the Site Santa Fe Biennial, New Mexico, and in 2014 he was a member of the jury of the Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador. He collaborated in the preparation of the Strategic Culture Plan for the city of Madrid. In 2002–8 he was the representative of the Generalitat de Catalunya for the Programming Committee at Hangar.
• He is a member of: ACCA, Catalan Association of Art Critics (Board: 2000–2); IKT, International Association of Contemporary Art Curators (Board: 2011–14); ADACE, Asociación de Directores de Arte Contemporáneo de España (Board since 2007); CIMAM, International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art.

Piotr Rypson

• a curator, art critic, literary and visual culture historian, and an expert in digital education, the former deputy director of the National Museum in Warsaw.

  • After his collaboration with Remont Gallery in 1978–81, Piotr Rypson became the head of the publishing house of the “Akademia Ruchu” theatre group from 1984–1988. In 1988 he became a co-editor, and then in 1990–1995 the editor of Obieg, an art monthly. Piotr Rypson also worked as the curator of the Collection and Galleries of the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (1993–1996).

• From 1990–2011 Piotr Rypson was also vice-president of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), president of the Programme Board of the Foksal Gallery Foundation, member of the Culture Foundation Board, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage committees, lecturer of the Post-Graduate Course in Museology at the Warsaw University, and member of the EU expert comittee on the future of the Europeana portal. In 2018 Piotr Rypson became the chairman of the Programme Board of the International Poster Biennale (2013–2017) and chairman of the Polish National Comittee ICOM Poland.

  • He is the author of a number of books – e.g. Czerwony monter. Mieczysław Berman – grafik, który zaprojektował polski komunizm (2017) [The Red Assembler. Mieczysław Berman – the graphic designer who designed the Polish communism] (2017), Nie gęsi. Polskie projektowanie graficzne 1919–1949 [On our own. Polish graphic design in 1919-1949] (2011, 2017). Piramidy, słońca, labirynty. [Pyramids, suns, labirynths] (2002), Książki i Strony. Polska książka awangardowa i artystyczna w XX wieku [Polish avant-garde and artistic books in the 20th century] (2000), Obraz słowa. Historia poezji wizualnej (1989) – and almost 200 articles, essays, catalogue entries and reviews printed in Poland and abroad.

• Piotr Rypson is also the author of the exhibition devoted to Tadeusz Peiper (2015). He recently prepared the exhibition Krzycząc: Polska! Niepodległa – 1918 [Shouting: Poland! Independence 2018] at the National Museum in Warsaw (2018).