Preface
This issue examines how curators navigate today’s institutional landscape and the broader political climate in Europe, from the rise of populism and the far right’s influence across social networks and media to the multiple, intersecting economic crises, the genocide in Palestine, and the war in Ukraine, considering their reverberations across the cultural field.
At present, curatorial projects are increasingly framed by political imperatives, though often in ways that ultimately serve their own agendas. In Germany, for example, one is discouraged from talking about Palestine. In France, one cannot hang the flag of Martinique on a public building.
As art institutions become increasingly managerial and corporatized, ultimately functioning as sites of capital, we ask, to what extent do they operate as a public sphere?
A contrario, Manuel Borja-Villel, the former director of the Museo Reina Sofía, examines the possibility of opening the museum to collectives of researchers, activists, and intellectuals, to foster long-term participation in the production of exhibitions. Initiatives such as Museo Situado (The Situated Museum) consider the museum’s role in its neighborhood, questioning the form and function of an exhibition from that point. Borja-Villel states, “The outside is very important because that is where truly radical questioning comes from.”