Seminars and Lectures

On 9 June 2022, Spain’s Congress of Deputies approved the ratification of Convention 189 in relation to decent employment for domestic workers, advocated by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). This significant victory was the outcome of years of struggle and the organisation of workers, who finally witnessed a commitment from the Spanish State to address their labour demands and acknowledge their work. Nevertheless, this road is not at its end and this commitment must materialise in the development of legislation and public policies related to care. 

In a session set up as half workshop, half relational theatre and a ghostly escape room, the activity becomes an immersive experience encompassing teaching, play and popular culture. All starting from the premise: If there’s something strange in your library, who’re you going to call?

The Museo Reina Sofía and Márgenes. Madrid International Film Festival, which explores new audiovisual idioms, begin a new collaboration. This joint project comprises the organisation of an annual series — this year devoted to artist and theorist Hito Steyerl (Munich, 1966) — the presentation of the festival inside the Museo and the performance of a live audiovisual piece. For the fourteenth edition of Márgenes, held from 22 to 30 November 2024, the work Does It Still Matter (2024), by composer and artist Noémi Büchi (Zürich, 1991), is due to be performed.

The exhibition Opera to a Black Venus is the most complete display of the work of Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba in Spain. This activity sees Kilomba survey her work inside the exhibition space as she explores the themes of memory, trauma and postcolonialism that run through her artistic practice.

Feminist urbanism critically analyses how power dynamics and gender roles influence the design and management of cities and urban spaces — an approach that challenges and transforms the spatial hierarchies which have historically privileged the needs of men and have excluded women and other marginalised groups. This encounter sees theorist and curator Elke Krasny converse with architect Izaskun Chinchilla on feminist ways of reimagining the present and future of the city.

This edition of Situated Voices opens up a conversation to reflect grassroots feelings, desires, analyses and proposals, thereby advocating real and fair access to culture for all.

For his new performance, TOTENTANZ - Morgen ist die Frage, Morau has conceived of a non-theatrical space, the Museo Reina Sofía, as the place from which to give form to his La Veronal stage conception, whereby dance, image, literature and music coalesce. In the three spaces inside the Museo where he will perform Totentanz — one as reception, one as performance, one as video projection — spectators are involved from the outset in a kind of spiritism session that is “disturbing but ridiculous”, as defined by Roberto Fratini, the author of the dramatic composition of the work, premiered in Spain on this occasion.

This year marks the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Joaquín Torres García (Montevideo, 1874–1949), one of the foremost artists in a rereading of modernity from the South.

Each autumn, the Museo Reina Sofía and Filmoteca Española jointly organise a film series which stretches across a two-month period, offering comprehensive retrospectives and anthological panoramas, many screened for the first time in Spain. This year’s edition centres on exploring the relationship between film and esperpento and dovetails with the exhibition Esperpento. Popular Art and Aesthetic Revolution, held in the Museo Reina Sofía, and its reflection on the concept formulated by the writer Ramón María del Valle-Inclán (1866–1936) in culture, art and thought in Spain.

Georges Didi-Huberman (Saint-Étienne, 1953), one the pre-eminent art historians of the present time, has curated two exhibitions in the Museo Reina Sofía: ATLAS. How to Carry the World on One’s Back? (2010–2011) and “In the Troubled Air…” (2024), both of which form a diptych on the knowledge and experience of images. In this lecture and talk, Didi-Huberman, with Manuel Borja-Villel, director of the Museo from 2008 to 2023, will expand upon the underpinnings of this diptych.

Continuing with the same strand of independent comics, and previous instalments devoted to Chris Ware and Julie Doucet, this edition of Documents is centred on the work of Daniel Clowes (Chicago, 1961), a key point of reference in contemporary comic books. On this occasion, Clowes will also participate in an encounter with Rubén Lardín.

For the first time, the Museo Reina Sofía welcomes Óprima!, an annual encounter which, since 2022, has gathered collectives, associations and creatives with an interest in uniting theatre and activism to drive social transformation via Theatre of the Oppressed: a practice, created by Brazilian dramatist and educator Augusto Boal in the 1960s, which puts forward “a theatre of oppressed classes for the oppressed” as a tool to fight against oppressive structures.

Thinking about the World from Art and Science is an activity organised by the Museo Reina Sofía to present the CNIO Arte project, an initiative run by the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicos (the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre), which has combined contemporary art and science since 2018. The project seeks to spark dialogue between international scientists and artists to explore common territories and to produce work from this conversation.

Museo Situado unites with the launch of the Padrón por derecho (Residency Registration by Right) campaign, together with different collectives, to make citizens aware of institutions’ compliance in people’s right to register their residency. This encounter features music and poetry which open another awareness-raising window upon this collective demand.

The Museo Reina Sofía’s Juan Antonio Ramírez Chair invites art historian Griselda Pollock to speak at its annual programme of master lectures, which reflects upon the historiography of art and its limits and vanishing points.

This fresh instalment examines an unexplored side of Joan Miró’s career: his poetic pursuit and the influence of poetry on his work. Therefore, the activity comprises a round-table discussion, conducted by specialists Olvido García Valdés, María González Menéndez and Carlos Martín García, and is centred on the analysis of a poetic text written by Miró, regarded as a possible manifesto of his artistic work. 

In the publication Ese sexo que no es uno (This Sex Which Is Not One, Akal, 2009), the philosopher Luce Irigaray sets out to travel through the monolithic representation of the sexual to recognise and liberate difference and multiplicity in pleasure. Under the title This Violence Which Is Not One, this encounter looks to emulate this defiant gesture, questioning a rigid imaginary of violence against women and the ideas of social justice associated with it. 

Esta actividad convoca a Eileen Myles, una de las voces más singulares de la poesía contemporánea y figura internacional de la literatura LGTBQI+, en un encuentro que toma forma de recital y conferencia, y que cuenta con la participación de la periodista Nerea Pérez de las Heras a cargo de la lectura del manifiesto I Want a President (1992) de la artista Zoe Leonard.

To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Gladys Palmera, the Museo Reina Sofía organises, in collaboration with the Gladys Palmera Foundation, a day which spins around African-influenced dances and rhythms, for instance danzón, chachachá, mambo, rumba, cumbia, salsa and ballenato, genres which have shaped Latin American cultural identity, from the Caribbean islands to the Southern Cone.

The Museo Reina Sofía organises an encounter in memory of cultural manager Berta Sureda (Barcelona, 1959 – Palma de Mallorca, 2024), whose work was pivotal in opening new horizons in cultural institutions, placing creators front and centre and driving forward citizen participation. The activity here comprises a series of interventions by different cultural agents and fellow professionals and is conducted, in parallel, in the Museo Reina Sofía and the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), with a live streaming between both spaces. The interventions will be followed by a dance piece by the company Mal Pelo, performed by María Muñoz.

This edition is devoted to de caballos y guitarras (Of Horses and Guitars, 2024), the latest feature-length film by artist, curator and researcher Pedro G. Romero (Aracena, Huelva, 1964), who will also present the film in both sessions. After the screening in the first session, the artist will take part in a discussion with the audience, while the second showing will be followed by a concert performed by Raül Refree and Alfredo Lagos.

American film-makers Serge Garcia and Richard Shpuntoff, selected for the second edition of the annual Joaquim Jordà Residencies, organised conjointly by the Museo Reina Sofía, Doclisboa and FIDMarseille, present a selection of their films, in addition to the projects they are working on during the residency.

The Museo Reina Sofía joins with the Festival de las Ideas (the Festival of Ideas), a new event which operates under the slogan “Thought Takes to the Streets” and comes into being with the aim of disseminating contemporary theory and, in the process, filling Madrid’s streets, squares and cultural spaces with concepts. In its first edition, which orbits around catharsis, the Museo welcomes a reflective walk around the Collection, led by artist Marina Núñez.  

The sixth edition of Art and Tourism Imaginaries, an encounter series organised with the research group TURICOM, sets forth a study which explores the phenomenon of postcards and their impact on shaping the themes and stereotypes which have formed the collective imaginary of geographies, peoples and consumer habits in contemporary visual culture.

The activity is made up of a morning workshop — split into three groups with different access — which aims to raise awareness, through four stations based on the principles of four-colour printing, of the array of possibilities within the artist’s book, from its poetic beginnings with Mallarmé and Apollinaire to its more contemporary expressions.

This workshop, run by Miguel Alan Córdova Silva and Víctor Hugo Robles, is based on publishing content related to LGBTIAQ+ subject matter on Wikipedia in Spanish. The new entries and translations carried out during the activity will be added to Wikiproyecto LGBT+ (LGBT+ Wikiproject), a Wikimedia Foundation project which advocates the development of content related to concepts and proper nouns from LGBT+ and queer themes, with the stress placed on Spanish-speaking activists to enhance their reach and improve articles on Wikipedia.

The Museo Reina Sofía’s outdoor summer cinema series returns, once again, in the Sabatini Building Garden throughout the months of July and August. The subject matter of this year’s edition explores how film reflects on itself or, similarly: how film thinks about film. From its origins to the present day, the film medium has explored its own nature from different perspectives: as a magical phenomenon of light and time, as a creative obsession, as an industry with its trades, conditions and precarities or as a series of narrations that depict a community.

Ecologies of Utopian Desire, held inside the framework of the Critical Ecologies Seminar from Connective Tissue, the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme, welcomes draughtsman and writer Miguel Brieva, who, across his career, has created a realm from which to imagine ecologically desirable worlds. Brieva is joined by researchers Julia Ramírez-Blanco and Alberto Berzosa to reflect, in conversation, on how to dream of better worlds, with an awareness of the political agency of these dreams and their viability and ideology.

La instalación de Eva Lootz La agonía de las lenguas (2020), que forma parte de la exposición Eva Lootz. Hacer como quien dice: ¿y esto qué es?, alerta sobre la extinción y la invisibilidad de los idiomas originarios amerindios como consecuencia de la pervivencia de dinámicas coloniales. La artista aborda con metáforas y procesos materiales la amplitud y originalidad de estas lenguas, pero también la paradoja de que gran parte de la academia no las considere idiomas de cultura y, por tanto, su enseñanza reglada sea testimonial. A partir de estas ideas, este taller propone debatir el lugar de estas lenguas en la educación oficial y poner en valor su singularidad a la hora de modificar nuestra experiencia y relación con el mundo.

The performances of James Lee Byars (Detroit, Michigan, 1932 – Cairo, 1997) bring together the aesthetic and life concerns of this unique artist. In conjunction with the exhibition the Museo Reina Sofía devotes to the artist, under the title James Lee Byars. Perfect Is the Question, and inside the framework of the programme Living Matter. Other Approaches to Material, this day re-stages, over two sessions, a selection of James Lee Byars’s performances, which open a dialogue with his visual work inside the space of the show. In the form of a coda, the activity also includes the presentation of a new performance conceived specifically for the occasion, Acaeció en Granada, which explores Byars’s relationship with the artist Miguel Benlloch (Loja, Granada, 1954 – Seville, 2018) in the city of Granada.

Memoria queer y las políticas del archivo es el primer seminario en España del proyecto europeo Perverse Collections: Building Europe’s Queer and Trans Archives [Colecciones perversas: construyendo los archivos queer y trans de Europa], del que el Museo Reina Sofía es socio junto con otras instituciones culturales. Este encuentro reúne a activistas, archivistas e historiador+s para debatir el surgimiento, la historia y las políticas de los archivos queer y trans en el Estado español y el sur europeo.

This encounter welcomes screenings of films by Shuruq Harb (Ramallah, 1980), Shereen Abdel-Karim Hassanein (Gaza City, 1996) and Lara Salous (Ramallah, 1988), three Palestinian multidisciplinary artists that are part of the Tadafuq project, which provides artistic training and mentoring online for Palestinian creatives from the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem. The initiative has been developed by artist and curator Nicolás Combarro since 2020.

The Museo Reina Sofía extends a carte-blanche invitation to members of the Radical Film Network, made up of historians and theorists from political and independent cinema, to put together a film programme of their choice in the Museo. In response, those in the network have selected fragments of films from the Sanrizuka documentary series made by Ogawa Productions, a seminal, non-fictional film collective from Japan that was founded in 1968 by film-maker Shinsuke Ogawa (1935–1992), a pre-eminent figure in Japanese cinema. 

The Museo’s Study Centre organises two days that pivot around the second edition of Connective Tissue, the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme in Critical Museology, Artistic Research Practices and Cultural Studies. During the encounter, a team of mobilisers — researchers that propel and coordinate, from their respective fields, the different Seminars in the Programme — share the work carried out to date and reflect upon their future perspectives. By the same token, the group of student resident researchers will present their own work, through posters, and will converse with other participants.  

In conjunction with World Refugee Day, this new edition of Situated Voices seeks to open a critical dialogue to thrust these major changes into the spotlight, changes which facilitate and accelerate processes of return or advocate the funding of third countries to exercise control over the movement of migrating peoples.

The Museo Reina Sofía Library and Documentation Centre holds a workshop to present different printed materials around LGBTQIA+ themes that have been added to its holdings in recent months. 

This encounter, organised inside the framework of the Critical Ecologies Seminar from Connective Tissue, the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme, sets out two sessions centred on incorporating environmental perspectives into the field of cultural studies, with an emphasis on situated research in an Iberian context. As a result, Adrián Almazán, Germán Labrador and Jaime Vindel will engage in conversation with researchers Jaume Franquesa and Iñaki Prádanos.

Inside the framework of the Critical Ecologies Seminar from Connective Tissue, the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme, science and environmental historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz reflects, alongside Adrián Almazán, the Seminar’s co-mobiliser, on global energy transformations in recent years and the need to adopt a critical perspective regarding models of ecological transition.

Look Closely is one of the action lines that shapes the mediation programme Casi libros (Almost Books). This particular line centres on training users in the artistic and documentary holdings from the Museo’s Library and disseminating manifold specialist tools designed for art research and contemporary creation by way of a series of formats comprising workshops, courses and thematic guides, to take place over the course of a year.

Once again, for another year, the Museo Situado assembly invites all residents and communities from Madrid’s Lavapiés neighbourhood to pervade the Museo Reina Sofía, inhabiting its spaces and transforming its Garden at the Neighbourhood Picnic. In short, a chance to encounter, celebrate and vindicate the struggles, rights and desires that mobilise them every day.    

Open Chair is a project which stems from a collaboration between the Museo Reina Sofía and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) via its Bachelor’s Degree in Art and aims to promote, annually, an in-person encounter which intersects and establishes a dialogue between university and museum. The space, geared towards training artists, seeks to contribute to creating an expanded and connected community of student creatives and researchers, and is linked to the Museo Reina Sofía Study Centre.