Seminars and Lectures

Marcel Broodthaers (Brussels, 1924 - Cologne, 1976) is a key figure of contemporary art, and a reference point and driving force in many current discourses and practices. Following his initial work as a poet, journalist and photographer, in 1964 Broodthaers decided to become a visual artist, and from that moment on concerns with providing a response to the basic questions posed by visual arts can be discerned as he interrogated the idea of representation and the production of meaning through the use of existing knowledge systems. In this round-table discussion Christophe Cherix, Jean-François Chevrier, Dirk Snauwaert and Manuel Borja-Villel will debate the different readings around the founder of the fictional museum.

Dance, gender and nation, three closely bound concepts within the context of contemporary Western culture, and the thematic cornerstones of this seminar. The focal point is the period spanning the second third of the 20^th century - a period of upheaval in the aftermath of the economic crisis of 1929 and the rise of the totalitarianism that would trigger the outbreak of the Second World War shortly afterwards.

The Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation-Restoration, the Geosciences Institute (CSIC-UCM), and the YOCOCU (YOuth in COnservation of CUltural Heritage) association have organized the fifth edition of the International Conference on Youth in Conservation of Cultural Heritage, celebrated from 21 to 23 September at the auditoriums of Nouvel Building.

This seminar analyses the role of Ulises Carrión (Mexico, 1941 - Holland, 1989) in conceiving new strategies to disseminate and distribute art from the mid-seventies, and the emphasis he placed on reinventing the uses, forms and appearances of the book as a device for action. 

The international conference Cold Atlantic will examine the artistic, cultural and aesthetic exchanges produced between the USA, Europe, Africa and Latin America during the Cold War. The aim is to highlight the axes of alignment and artistic exchange between the geopolitically minor actors that were trapped inside the huge theatrical strategy from this period.

Inside the framework of Constituent Machines: Constituent Power, Biopolitics, Democracy, the Museo Reina Sofía will hold the second session in the programme of lectures and seminars, on this occasion conducted by Wolfgang Streeck.

Within the context of the networks in which the Museo Reina Sofía participates alongside collectives, organisations and independent research groups, the Museo’s Study Centre welcomes the conference Domesticities, organised by the Las Raras collective.

The Museo Reina Sofía will host a lecture and seminar by Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, to take place within the context of the programme Constituent Machines: Constituent Power, Biopolitics, Democracy, jointly organised with the Commons Foundation, and in collaboration with Intermediae.

New Babylon (1956–1974) is a networked city project conceived by the Dutch artist and architect Constant Nieuwenhuys for the “total fulfilment of life”, an approach to urbanism based on the freedom of the individual through the power of play and creativity. This activity, which marks the end of the retrospective in the Museo devoted to Constant, examines this total artwork’s place in the utopian urbanism that followed World War Two through a lecture by Anthony Vidler and a round-table discussion featuring participation from José Miguel de Prada Poole, Izaskun Chinchilla, José Pérez de Lama and Ethel Baraona.

In this seminar, Fundación de los Comunes, Red de Conceptualismos del Sur and Museo Reina Sofía put forward a reflection on issues of social, cultural and political memory through the work of archives that guard, transmit and produce public memory generated by the current forms of social action conservation, which also shuts out major parts of collective experience from dominant discourse.

Independent theatre groups in Spain revamped the stage from popular culture, university classrooms, alternative circuits and touring as a form of representation. As a whole, they represent a key chapter in the history of 20^th-century theatre in Spain, and this seminar, integrated into a broader network project, looks to remedy the absence of debates and studies around this crucial subject.

The international conference Politics, State Power and the Making of Art History in Europe after 1945 explores the ways political power seeks to shape and influence the activities of art historians, art critics, museum professionals and cultural institutions in order to control the understanding of art and artistic heritage from 1945 to the present.

Started in 2010, the Museo Reina Sofía’s programme of master lectures marks the beginning, or end, of the annual academic activity conducted in the Museo, comprising a series of MAs, study programmes, debate groups and research residencies, run in collaboration with different universities.

This seminar sets out to rewrite the history of post-war art in Europe, traditionally presented as the disjointed amalgamation of art scenes divided into antagonistic blocs. By deconstructing national limits and articulating a transversal debate, this programme presents a divergent history, whilst also identifying new voices and positions.

The Internet has produced new behaviours, subjectivities and institutions linked to another way of being and doing. This seminar debates how these changes throw established categories of art, the author and the circulation of unique work off balance, whilst also forming profound contradictions – from creativity as an economic value to indistinct work time. Is considering another artistic ecosystem possible from these ambiguities?

Organize with the occasion of ARCOmadrid, this meeting aims to provide a space for reflection where art professionals working in museums and contemporary art centres can exchange ideas about the possibilities that this exhibition format offers to their institutions.

Appropriating the theme raised by Richard Hamilton in his well-known 1956 collage, this seminar examines the crossover between artistic practices and popular culture that gave rise to multiple phenomena associated with Pop Art. With participation from Kerstin Stakemeier, Eloy Fernández Porta, Diedrich Diederichsen and Benjamin Buchloh.

This seminar forms part of a tri-annual project that explores expanded theatricalities in different areas: the public sphere, the city, the home, networks of affection, schools and educational spaces.

Presented as the culmination of the course on critical practices developed by Observatorio Metropolitano in the Museo, this seminar addresses the recent waves and movements of democracy, from Latin America to the Arab Spring. Over three days the sociologists Asef Bayat and Luis Tapia Mealla will debate the new international constituent situation.

The exhibition Playgrounds takes a historical and political approach to space for play and its socialising and transgressive potential. In dialogue with the exhibition, this course and seminar debates the expansion of art towards spheres of institutional experimentation and intervention in public space, ultimately endeavouring to highlight the role of play in new modes of contemporary subjectivation.

The transformations in Europe over the past three decades challenge national historical/critical narratives, and those based on apparent global continuity. This debate explores how art practices have influenced these situations in constant flux, calling into question these narratives and imagining possible alternatives.

With regard to the acknowledgement of research networks in different fields and new methods of collection and dissemination stemming from archive practices, the Museo Reina Sofía presents this project. MASE is a collective of researchers, critics and artists connected to sound art and an innovative online archive and platform in a traditionally ignored field.

This encounter reflects on the formation of a new type of European political and cultural agency following the exhaustion of a union based on the market economy and on the precarious geopolitical balance of the States.

This activity presents the research conducted by Pulska Grupa, a Croatian collective of architects and urban planners who have been research residents at Museo Reina Sofía in 2012-2013.

This project is conceived as a plural space for reflection and debate, the aim of which is generate proposals based on a critical diagnosis of the contemporary art system in Spain.

With the participation of Armando Montesinos, Mariano Navarro and Juan Pablo Wert, this activity presents the exhibition Idea: Painting-Force.