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Interview
3 April 2016 2.00 h

A place in the world of art

Ferran Barenblit Every Friday afternoon on El Punt Avui Televisió, Barney chats with an English-speaking expat. For this month's interview he talks to the director of the Macba art gallery, Ferran Barenblit.
W
hat's the story be­hind your sur­name?
I was born in Buenos Aires, and moved here in 1977 when I was eight. When I was a teenager I trans­lated my name into Cata­lan, one of the rea­sons was that when peo­ple saw my name in Span­ish they would ad­dress me only in Span­ish.
Your fam­ily left Buenos Aires to es­cape dic­ta­tor­ship. Do you have mem­o­ries of that?
Very clear ones. The '70s were very dif­fi­cult times in all Latin Amer­ica. For­tu­nately, we found a home in Barcelona and we were ex­tremely wel­come here.
Do you ever go back?
Yes, some­times. But every time I go it is a very in­tense and emo­tional ex­pe­ri­ence. Iden­tity is some­thing that you cook very slowly.
Be­fore com­ing to Barcelona you spent three years in New York and seven in Madrid.
When I fin­ished study­ing art his­tory here, I went to New York to study mu­seum stud­ies, and then I was lucky enough to get my first mu­seum job there at the New Mu­seum. Later, in 2008, in Madrid, I was of­fered the di­rec­tor­ship of the Cen­tro de arte 2 de mayo.
Have you al­ways been fond of con­tem­po­rary art?
I didn't see it as a vo­ca­tion, but I've been very lucky. When I fin­ished my de­gree, I got a great job, which was as­sist­ing a pho­tog­ra­pher, Leopold Samsó, to take pho­tos for artists' cat­a­logues, a job I think now doesn't exist any more, but which was im­por­tant at the time. And I was very lucky be­cause that way I had ac­cess to artists' stu­dios. And I found out that there were also liv­ing artists, not just artists from the Mid­dle Ages, the Re­nais­sance or Baroque, which is what I had stud­ied. That job gave me an un­der­stand­ing of what con­tem­po­rary art meant in a mo­ment when it wasn't what we have now; there were no mu­se­ums of con­tem­po­rary art, just the Miró Foun­da­tion. That was when I de­cided I wanted to work in a mu­seum.
Any tips for those who want to do this type of work?
That your tal­ent is al­ways needed, the sec­ond tip is that there are no great recipes to be a cu­ra­tor: just cu­rate, any­where. In the '80s cu­ra­tors started doing shows in their apart­ments. Hans Ul­rich did shows on his own fridge. You need in­for­ma­tion, po­si­tion­ing, and courage.
Do you choose all your shows?
A mu­seum shouldn't be about the di­rec­tor's per­sonal taste. My pes­onal taste might not fill a mu­seum as big as Macba. It's about col­lec­tive de­ci­sions; what the mu­seum has to be is some­thing de­cided with the coun­cil.
Macba has just cel­e­brated its 20th an­niver­sary, last No­vem­ber.
My first day in this po­si­tion was Oc­to­ber 1, and this gave me a great op­por­tu­nity to think about the next 20 years. My ques­tion is how the mu­seum will look in 2035. It is a very po­lit­i­cal ques­tion, mu­se­ums are very po­lit­i­cal places. They are also in­sti­tu­tional labs in which we imag­ine the world in the fu­ture.
What ex­hi­bi­tions has Macba got on at the mo­ment?
A show by José An­to­nio Hernández-Díez, a Venezue­lan artist liv­ing in Barcelona; then Amer­i­can artist An­drea Fraser, who prac­tises in­sti­tu­tional cri­tique. In May we've got the show Punk. Its Traces in Con­tem­po­rary art. It's not a show about music or about peo­ple's hair, but it's about cul­tural rev­o­lu­tion.
The Macba also runs ed­u­ca­tional pro­grammes.
They are very in­tense and var­ied and we plan to make them more in­tense in the fu­ture. We have pro­grammes for schools, fam­i­lies and adults (www.​macba.​cat). I would say that al­most every day there is some­thing dif­fer­ent. I also rec­om­mend shows of Macba's own col­lec­tions to vis­i­tors. Macba is also a col­lec­tor and we have about 6,000 works at the mo­ment, rang­ing from the sec­ond half of the 20th to the 21st cen­tury. And fi­nally, we have three more solo shows, one by Mi­ralda, a con­cep­tual Cata­lan artist who was very well-known for his work re­lated to food. This is a very am­bi­tious ex­hi­bi­tion, mostly about his work in Amer­ica in the '70s. Then an­other solo show by Lebanese artist Akram Za­atari, about how to cre­ate a col­lec­tive mem­ory via im­ages. And fi­nally, an­other show which looks into the decade of the'80s.
Nowa­days we are bom­barded with im­ages. Is that a help or more of a hin­drance?
It's just a re­al­ity. Some­body said that in one year we gen­er­ate more im­ages than in the whole his­tory of hu­man­ity be­fore, and I think that gives a great op­por­tu­nity to art, be­cause most of the in­for­ma­tion we re­ceive is via im­ages.
What are the main chal­lenges you face as di­rec­tor of a con­tem­po­rary art mu­seum?
Being in­signif­i­cant, doing work that makes our lives a bit more in­tense: “Art is what makes life more in­ter­est­ing than art.”
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