Patricia Sorroche Quesada

Sorroche Quesada, Patricia
Patricia Sorroche Quesada, Head of Exhibitions, Museu Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain.

Conference Report. December 2024

Introduction

Sustainability, why, when, and for whom? CIMAM Annual Conference 2024 addressed questions that prompt institutions to rethink how they can face the current situation that has emerged from their deep-rooted connection with capitalist neoliberalism. Thus, sustainability, not only understood in terms of ecological efficiency, compels us to think in terms of labor, affective, and social relations as key elements to question the art system and the role of museums.

How can we address a museum-institution that was both the result and the paradigm of capitalism within the art world? Does art only exist within the institution-museum? How can we approach and redirect the art model that the West created and developed from positions of discursive hegemony? What other models are currently operating in art that do attend to the condition of sustainability? What do we mean when we speak of sustainability within the institution?

From all these questions that arose from the various talks and conferences that took place in Los Angeles, along with the exhibitions or projects I had the opportunity to visit, which proposed moving beyond the institution and understood how other spaces of enunciation work, I propose this text. I will attempt to develop, from the axiom, only a few thoughts or ideas that might help identify and propose a new epistemology or a possibility of redefining or re-founding certain concepts or categories that are understood to be outdated or exhausted in their current formula.

Contextual Framework: Museums of the End of the Century and Their Expansion into the Present

  1. How can we confront a museum-institution that was the result and paradigm of capitalism within the art world?

The collective imagination we have of the museum institution was built throughout the 20th century as a result of a process of Western secularization. In this context, the museum positioned itself as the place where the contemporary art heritage it was responsible for was housed, safeguarded, and disseminated. In the 1990s, there was a perfect communion between art and architecture, leading to an expansive boom in museum institutions, particularly in Europe and the United States. Many of these were conceived as contemporary art museums. Progress, combined with a booming Western economy, promoted the construction of these grand cultural containers, which proposed the exhibition and legitimization of a collective imagination through contemporary practices that followed the hegemony of the discourse of Art History itself. In this way, museum institutions solidified a History without other narratives and became megalithic architectural standards within the art system. All of this added another layer of capitalism and neoliberalism to an art market that had long been experiencing an unchecked surge in terms of surplus value, worth, and capital.

Given this assertion, undoing or reversing the very system of success that the West has created seems like a difficult and far from simple task. The urgency of the moment pushes us to give rapid responses, formulating constituent ideas without time for reflection. Perhaps, it is not about making existing institutions more efficient or more sustainable in terms of ecological efficiency; rather, what we need to question is the very institution-museum model—questioning the parameters, conditions, and obligations these museums have created within a capitalist system.

Perhaps the first step has been the inclusion of other narratives, histories, practices, and cosmologies within the stories legitimized by the institution-museum. As Boris Groys pointed out, anything susceptible to being musealized becomes part of the capitalist museum-institution, where the system absorbs and co-opts any possibility that challenges or disrupts it, as we will see later. However, visualizing and narrating these alterities within museums has allowed the inclusion of voices that were once excluded from Art History.

The Market and its Political-Economic Condition

This is further compounded by the contradictory condition of growth in museums today, which corresponds to acquisition policies that have accelerated and increased in recent years. A clear consequence of this has been the proliferation of fairs, biennales, etc., which wildly promote the buying and acquisition of artworks. This rush to buy in order to increase the institution’s collection has led many museums created in the 20th century to exhaustion and overexploitation of their resources, both spatially, in storage, in environmental conditions, and with human and technical resources. However, despite the evident saturation in these museums, the policies remain expansive and not restrictive or restorative of the system.

This reasoning and discussion bring the focus of the debate to question the necessity of "collecting," while also emphasizing whether everything "must be preserved." But thinking in these terms would lead us to the dismemberment of some of our imaginaries. As Walid Raad proposes, there is always a game between simulacra, fiction, and reality in institutional discourses. Some of them have questioned this preservation and custodianship condition to minimize ecological impact and ensure sustainability within the buildings. This was highlighted in Andrea Fraser's presentation on the growth of museums in relation to their environmental impact over the last years and what the possible consequences might be.

Affective and Social Sustainability within the Institution

Is it possible, in this context, to engage in a process of reflection to reconfigure and reconstitute institutions? The concept of sustainability goes beyond the efficiency of resources to include the sustainability of workers, both in terms of their labor conditions and the environments in which they work. The insufficiency of financial support in many institutions has led to staff reaching the brink of collapse as a result of overexertion and the productivity pressures to which these institutions are subjected. The very concept of sustainability may need this space for dialogue to address the challenges institutions must face in order to offer solutions that align with new institutional models. This period of latency also responds to the urgency of reformulating how institutions are organized, what governance models are in place, and what the economic policies for programming are.

Manuel Segade proposed a review of the genealogies of the Museo Reina Sofía from a more systemic and holistic perspective, but above all, he called for a new organizational restructuring of the staff. This proposal advocated for the creation of dialogue spaces within a non-hierarchical system. It suggests a new framework for action in both leadership and programming policies. At the same time, it advocates for multilingualism in the museum as spaces for meeting and shared governance.

Towards New Institutionalities. Context and the Emergence

If there is one thing we have noticed, it is that the system is reconfiguring as new voices become more visible; and these voices not only propose new ways of deconstructing hegemonic history, but also offer other institutional possibilities, both in their economic and political-social conditions. The memories of the future and postcolonial narratives are excluded from the traditional institution, which resists deconstructing established forms of exhibition and visual representation. The challenge of the future lies in creating new, synchronous spaces that can facilitate the recovery of historical absences and marginalized voices.

This new institutionalization, first and foremost, breaks with the epistemology of the word, seeking, instead of the institution, a place for listening and emotional engagement with narratives and practices. Thus, its condition involves restoring to artistic practice its transformative power rooted in social justice. But above all, it actively addresses intersectional practices of race, gender, and class, opening up artistic discourses and practices that resonate within communities previously underrepresented in the institution, with the will to decolonize art. Although in recent years museums have made efforts to include other voices, they remain far from being places where these voices can truly reconfigure themselves and speak from their own terms.

The context in which these new institutionalities arise is very different from that of the end of the century. This shift allows for the reconfiguration of exhibition spaces as well as artistic production. The project by Zitta Cobb at Fogo Island follows many of the lines we have outlined, such as community, land, sustainability with the environment, and the return of artistic practice to local communities. The exhibition Cybersexologies at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles reflects on sexual dissidences through digital mechanisms in a globalized context; or the Art + Practice project offers the Afro-descendant or African-American community a place from which to narrate their stories and communities; or the Crenshaw Center, which proposes an active struggle against abolitionism from an ecosystemic perspective. All these projects respond to a new way of approaching the world from art—an art that is more inclusive, just, and socially conscious, rooted in social intersectionality. In this new context, the museum is just another artifact, and the narratives have been displaced to be understood in other contexts and places of reflection and interaction.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to the CIMAM Board for giving me the opportunity to confront the different realities that the institution is going through at this moment, and to consider the urgency of the challenges that must be addressed in the coming years. My practice involves questioning the institution by proposing new models for narrating and making visible counter-narratives. Being in Los Angeles has allowed me to expand my knowledge and establish new perspectives. I am extremely grateful for allowing me to be part of these debates and this reconfiguration of the contemporary art museum.


Biography

Patricia Sorroche Quesada’s (b. 1980) professional and academic career has developed and focused on contemporary art and practice since 2005; she recently joined the Tàpies Museum staff as Head of Exhibitions. Previously, she worked at MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, managing the permanent collection and from 2019 she was curator of the MACBA Collection.

She curated the last two major exhibition at MACBA about the Collection such as “Poetic Intention. Prelude. MACBA Collection” 2022-2024 and “A sort Century. MACBA Collection” 2019-2022, among other over 20 years. She collaborated as writer and teacher, and she has written in different publications and blogs focusing on contemporary art.

Patricia teaches through the Master in Cultural Management at the UIC, Universidad International de Catalunya. Additionally, she is the co-founder of the research and curatorial collective named LaOtra, focusing its practice on institutional violence and criticism, post-feminist and how to create a collective and common place. She participates in different working-groups discussing about the new institutional model for museums and how to re-think Tàpies from the present. She will also be part of the Broad of pedagogic arts Center in Barcelona.

Patricia Sorroche Quesada, Head of Exhibitions, Museu Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain, has been awarded by a Spanish Cultural Institution.