Beyond Museum: Institutional Experiments and Urban Movements in Contemporary Spain
Lecture by Jesús Carrillo
Spanish city centers and museums—especially contemporary art museums such as MNCA Reina Sofía in Madrid and MACBA in Barcelona—have become battlefields of confronting political imaginations since the late 1990s.
The image of a “cultural city” as an endless source of wealth, as seen by authorities and investors, has been mitigated by a “claim for the street,” the political idea of a city understood as a space for living together, propagated by new social movements. Art institutions have taken an ambivalent role in this war, being both an important factor in gentrification processes and a trench for political resistance. Jesús Carillo will discuss these developments as both an active protagonist of these struggles and an academic investigator.
Jesús María Carrillo Castillo
Lecturer in the Art History Department of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid since 1997. Head of the Cultural Programs Department of Museo Reina Sofía from 2008 to 2015, and General Director of Cultural Programs and Activities of the Madrid City Council from 2015 to 2016.
Graduate in Art History (Murcia University), M.A. in Historical Studies (Warburg Institute) and Ph.D. in History (King’s College Cambridge). Research fellow at the Huntington Library, Jonathan Brown Library, and the Anthropology Department at CSIC (Madrid). Tomás Harris Lecturer at UCL in 2003. Member of the Project team of L’Internationale network from 2013.
He combines the history of early modern representations of nature and technology and their relationships with imperial powers, with a critical analysis of contemporary art institutions and narratives.
Selected writings:
Arte en la Red (Madrid: Cátedra, 2004), Naturaleza e Imperio (Madrid: 12 calles, 2004), Tecnología e Imperio (Madrid: Nivola, 2003), Oviedo on Las Casas (Turnhaut: Brepols, 2000), and, as editor, Modos de hacer: arte crítico, esfera pública y acción directa (Salamanca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Salamanca, 2001), Tendencias del Arte. Arte de Tendencias (Madrid: Cátedra, 2003), Desacuerdos: sobre arte, políticas y esfera pública en el Estado español vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 (Barcelona: Macba, 2004–2015), Douglas Crimp: Posiciones críticas (Madrid: Akal, 2005), Martha Rosler. Imágenes Públicas (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2008).