Three years ago, Pepe Serra (Barcelona, 55) renewed his contract as director of the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) and commissioned the expansion project, which is expected to be completed in 2029, coinciding with the centenary of the International Exhibition celebrated in Barcelona and at the Palau Nacional. The project takes place in the middle of the year and the next season will be the last where the museum will organize temporary exhibitions, in addition to being forced to close a factory while waiting to gain ground on the renovated Pabellón Victoria Eugenia. Serra asks for patience to know what the report of the expanded MNAC will fall on, which the last semester has lived immersed in another less festive brown: the trial of the romantic works of Sijena, with a sentence that orders their return to Huesca. This is a problem that can be executed.
Question. There is nothing left in the new Gran Museo Egipcio de El Cairo. Are major museums a source of inspiration for the MNAC?
Answer. We want to reach out to everyone. But it’s worse that he can go to a museum and it looks like another. The MNAC must do two things. The first is to speak from the place where you are, which is Catalonia, and from this place, to look at the world, because your look will be unique. We should not be second to anything.
P. Where is the MNAC now?
A. In a very good moment, with a question like Sijena, which is complete. Over the last eight years, we have carried out very important transformation work oriented solely and exclusively towards public service. We now have a unique opportunity to achieve something that has been called for for many years, namely expansion. We did not do it because it was the centenary (of the 1929 International Exhibition, when its headquarters were built) or because of a suggestion to expand for the sake of expanding: it was the culmination of a project that made the civil war impossible and that Francoism interrupted. Since 1940, everything that has happened in this country has continued since 1940, the construction of what we are today, plurality, migratory oils, the conquest of democratic rights… is not permanently displayed anywhere. Generations and media of artists. And all the photography of the country is hidden. We can’t do it.
It is not a question of expanding for the sake of expanding: it is a question of the culmination of a project which makes civil war impossible and Francoism interrupted. »
P. With what relationship?
A. The construction of the report, which is very complex, must be very slow and we are at the beginning, in the skeleton. We see wonderful potential, but we are aware of the difficulties and the fact that everything cannot be an author’s project, nor a director’s project, nor a restorer’s project. Nor can it be an essayistic project, nor a politicized or isolated project. Nadie questions Pompidou about his report now that he has started the work.
P. Does the collection send?
A. Everything we will have can only be done from the collection, which includes many works that the MNAC does not have, but they constitute the country’s collection, because it is the Catalan museum. Over the years, we have established alliances that will now establish themselves, from private foundations to major collections or local museums. With these works we will produce another work, which we will work with living artists. From there, we must be able to make sense of this collection, to articulate relationships and questions, and not to pontificate. We’re not going to take certain works and twist them to make them say something. It cannot be something essayistic, it cannot be a theoretical model, because the theoretical means nothing, there cannot be empty gestures. We talk to everyone.
P. Are you proposing a change in governance? For example, in terms of resources, are private entities involved in funding the museum?
A. No, it will pay the public administration and it is true that, in this leap in scale, the museum needs different instruments to generate income, a commercial company, another way of managing spaces. It is true that you can find a more flexible travel companion, but the financing depends on the administration. What we are doing is finishing a museum that is still unfinished today. It is not possible to avoid an 80-year perspective. We are the only European city that arrives and we don’t find names here from 40 years ago.
P. What has happened in recent years?
A. You probably don’t have any more resources to explain what we do. Maybe we didn’t explain very well, like you see someone writing. We have not been effective enough in communicating these changes.
P. The museum has always wanted to reach the city…
A. Stick to the paradox: the most important museum, the most useful, the one that can explain the most, the one that can be most useful to the whole world… it is the most inaccessible. The expansion makes it possible to connect to the urban fabric. Here — indicated by the MNAC plan — go a million people, here — pointing to the Montjuïc fountain and the Victoria Eugenia Palace, where the main entrance to the museum will be located from 2029, a few hundred meters from the current access — reaching millions every year. In this jump (the finger pricks hard on the stairs) a million people were lost. This improves accessibility.
P. Will the metro arrive?
A. The metro starts running again, but it does not close. It won’t be in 2029 or in trouble.
P. Could the new Thyssen Museum be responsible for Cine Comedia?
A. The museum system has never been considered a core competency. He asked if he could take on the project. The collection entitled Catalana is correct, worthy, good, but not relevant enough; here it would not be exposed.
P. They will be forced to close spaces during the expansion, what impact will this have?
A. In 2027 we will close the first floor, where all the modern art is, and we think we can keep the medieval collections open. But we don’t have this information, it depends on accessibility. For 2027, 2028 and 2029 we do not plan any temporary exhibitions.
P. Aren’t you getting tired of the expansion work, now that you need six months to live through the dispute over the Roman wall paintings of Sijena?
A. Between May and September, Sijena said he will have one director in charge each day and another different director for the museum. It was very hard. But we’re fine, the team is a piña.
P. Let’s say I’m a piña, but since I left, with patronage, that doesn’t seem to be the case. He asked the Ministry of Culture for a report on the risks of transfer and heard nothing. Do they consider themselves powerless?
A. In the political dimension, the museum should not enter and was the only one trying to protect my team. Everything the museum wanted to do was achieved and patronage unanimously granted it a good visa. But I can’t decide what to do, and if the Ministry has decided to join a report from the Generalitat and the Ayuntamiento before doing the same, I will do it. I understand their political balances.
In a moment of complexity for Sijena, jumping off the boat would be bullshit”
P. How is the report evolving on the future of MNAC without Sijena?
A. Nothing. It’s not our job, it’s a deposit. It’s a work that arrived here, during the war, that I cherish and that I put on the world map. If there is someone who, knowing the information and scientific evidence, believes they can move it and take responsibility, they can comply with the sentence. Otherwise, the judge will decide if he is ejectable. I greatly sympathize with someone who wants a museum in their house because I have all the paintings of the Pyrenees. Now, are the places and conditions (of the Sijena monastery) suitable? No, I see. Nadie assures him. Does this resemble something of a survivor of the war, who found a place and a history here, taking it to the Monegros, a vacant population that does not have technical personnel?
P. A newspaper, in 2016, recorded some strange words from its owner in which he decided that he would not be director if he moved to the works.
A. If you misunderstood. The question was “if you make me do it”, but we’re not there yet and I don’t think it will happen. We have the best historians in the world when it comes to Romanesque art, but we can’t seem to get things going. If we say so, we will put out a tender. In a moment like Sijena’s, jumping off the boat would be stupid. And then there is something that will be funny, which is that the Ministry of Culture will have to give permission to move them, because they are an Asset of Cultural Interest. It is obligatory, according to the law. Technically, we have reached the limit.
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