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Interview
mpalau@elpuntavui.cat - 7 March 2021 2.00 h

Joan Oliveras

President of the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC)

“Museums need a new relationship with society”

- mpalau@elpuntavui.cat

The busi­ness­man and jew­ellery de­signer Joan Oliv­eras (Barcelona, 1957) has been ap­pointed the new pres­i­dent of the Na­tional Art Mu­seum of Cat­alo­nia (MNAC).

What is your ideal MNAC, and what is achiev­able or un­achiev­able in turn­ing it into that?
The ul­ti­mate am­bi­tion is, one, a MNAC with re­sources, and two, a MNAC that can con­tinue to com­pete in the league of large mu­se­ums. For me these is­sues are fun­da­men­tal. As for what is achiev­able, I’m very stub­born and op­ti­mistic, and I’ve never liked the word “un­achiev­able”.
The mat­ter of re­sources clashes with re­al­ity.
The MNAC needs suf­fi­cient rev­enue to ex­pand the col­lec­tion and con­sol­i­date its role as the mu­seum of ref­er­ence in me­dieval art, while also act­ing as a na­tional mu­seum.
How do you get the re­sources that are lack­ing?
With good or­gan­i­sa­tion. Things need to be stream­lined. The MNAC needs its own law as the Prado, the Reina Sofía, the Lou­vre or the Met­ro­pol­i­tan have. I know we’re smaller, but we are in this league. Ei­ther we have the tools to com­pete or we won’t be able to con­tinue to do what we do. If we be­lieve in the in­sti­tu­tion, we must pro­vide it with the tools for it to de­velop.
You don’t like the word ’un­achiev­able’, so let’s talk about the chal­lenges.
We need to be aware of our own par­tic­u­lar ob­sta­cles and solve them cre­atively. The most com­plex thing is build­ing con­sen­sus, much of which is po­lit­i­cal. The three pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tions that make up the MNAC con­sor­tium [Cata­lan gov­ern­ment, Barcelona city coun­cil and Spain’s cul­ture min­istry] often have dif­fer­ences. Con­sen­sus is pos­si­ble if we’re able to put the mu­seum above all else. The cur­rent gov­er­nance mech­a­nisms are far re­moved from the mu­seum.
Do you have a strat­egy for ob­tain­ing pri­vate funds?
The MNAC needs a good spon­sor­ship and pa­tron­age de­part­ment. Pa­trons used to do what they did for noth­ing, out of pure con­vic­tion. There are some of those left, but I don’t see any new ones on the hori­zon. Spon­sor­ship is now a mat­ter of ex­change. And the ex­change is al­ways based on in­ter­est. What shall we do? Ap­proach spon­sor­ship from the per­spec­tive of seek­ing what helps us. And that should open the door to com­pa­nies out­side the usual frame­work.
The pan­demic has opened up a new sce­nario for mu­se­ums. How do you plan to deal with it?
We’ll set up a board to think about the MNAC’s fu­ture role. The dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion has trans­formed our lives. Added to the chronic ef­fects of the pan­demic, a dif­fer­ent re­al­ity will take shape in which we don’t know if mu­se­ums will be able to con­tinue play­ing the role they have until now. We don’t know if a dif­fer­ent world will emerge in which mu­se­ums will have to scram­ble to find a new re­la­tion­ship with so­ci­ety.
Who will be on this board?
I don’t have the names yet. It will be mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary. There will be ex­perts in dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, cul­tural man­age­ment, busi­ness man­age­ment, eco­nom­ics, psy­chol­ogy...
What unites or sep­a­rates you from your pre­de­ces­sor, Miquel Roca Jun­yent?
We’ve known each other for many years. He’s done im­por­tant work in the mu­seum. In many ways I con­tinue to be part of his jour­ney and in oth­ers I in­no­vate things but com­plete his con­tri­bu­tion.
What do you think of the fact that the King of Spain has closed the mu­seum twice to hold a ban­quet?
There are prin­ci­ples under which we should al­ways act as those who have re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions. One is that it should be at no cost to the in­sti­tu­tion. Two is that it con­tribute to the in­sti­tu­tion’s sus­tain­abil­ity. And three that it isn’t against the pub­lic in­ter­est. The case you are ask­ing me about does not meet any of that. Clos­ing a mu­seum for an event seems to me a priv­i­lege that un­der­mines cul­ture and the pub­lic’s ac­cess to cul­ture.

In­ter­view art

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