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30/04/2008An elite museum for the people

An elite museum for the people New Reina Sofía contemporary art museum chief has big plans to usher the gallery into a new era of changes.

MADRID - The Reina Sofía contemporary art museum has entered a new era.

Four months into his appointment as the new director of the landmark Madrid gallery, Manuel  Borja-Villel has mapped out the guidelines of how things will be run from now on, and says the Reina Sofía will soon become more accessible to everyone.

For him and his new right hand, Lynne Cooke, who was until now the artistic director of the Dia Art Foundation in New York, the challenge is to draw all kinds of public to the museum, rather than just elite viewers.

In order to do this, the first move is to expand the museum's exhibition space by an additional 4,500 square metres without going over the ordinary EUR 8-million budget and without closing the museum down for a single day.

The permanent collection will also be transformed. "Every three years we will think over the collection. There will be three different paces of change: a fast one for contemporary art, a medium one for the 1960s and 1970s, and a slow one for the historical avant-garde movements," Borja-Villel said.

Upcoming exhibitions will feature work by the US artist and activist Nancy Spero, the New York photographer Zoe Leonard and the Lithuanian video artist Deimantas Narkevicius.

The year 2009 will be a transitional year, with shows on the Spanish sculptors Julio González and Juan Muñoz, and it will not be until 2010 that the new plans will be fully implemented, with the number of exhibitions going up from 19 to 28, Borja-Villel explained.

Meanwhile, emerging art will continue to be a feature of the Reina Sofía, but with a different perspective. "Dedicating space to young artists is the oldest thing around, but it can be done in a different way. It can be a day's project but it can also be developed over the course of a year. The space we reserve for this will be very open."

There is one thing that will not change, however. The star of the museum will continue to be Picasso's great anti-war mural, Guernica.

The room it is housed in - the most visited area in the entire museum- will undergo some minor changes to enable better viewing, and will resemble the Paris Expo of 1937 that it was originally created for, although the painting itself will not be moved around.

"For now, I don't dare touch it," the director joked. "This is a piece that must be viewed like a photogram, from the front. What we are planning to do will be completed in three days, or at least that is what I'm told."
In short, the formula is to make the new museum something halfway between an elitist centre and a popular gallery.

Part of the reforms is aimed at making the Reina Sofía more accessible from all points of view, including the architectural, with new entrance doors.

Tickets will be sold online as well as on site, and there are plans for more flexible opening hours.

"Right now, opening times have tourists and people without jobs in mind. Like many other museums in the world, we need to rethink this and negotiate with personnel, but the goal is to make things easier for the public."

A glimpse of a new era that promises to bring the people closer can already be seen in one of the first changes: opening up to the public the central garden - which features an Alexander Calder sculpture - that was off limits until now.

text by El Pais, Angeles Garcia and Expatica
photos by ANP, Flickr contributors losmininos and spcoon


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