The new artistic director of the MUN

Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, new artistic director of the Museo Universidad de Navarra
His predecessors in the position are Valentín Vallhonrat and Rafael Levenfeld

Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro from Coruña, a graduate and doctor in Art History from the British universities of Aberdeen and Essex respectively, and an expert in Latin American art, has been appointed artistic director of the Museo Universidad de Navarra. MUN, a centre with which he has collaborated for six years as an associate professor of the Master of Curatorial Studies taught there. In his words, the MUN has a unique characteristic, that of being a university museum in Spain, and its enormous potential must be taken advantage of to connect the academic and artistic spheres in a research and creation laboratory.

Pérez-Barreiro thus completes the management team of this space, which includes Teresa Lasheras as artistic director of performing arts and music, Jaime García del Barrio as general director, José Manuel Trillo as deputy managing director and Elisa Montserrat as director of communication and marketing. Preceding the Galician curator in this position are Valentín Vallhonrat and Rafael Levenfeld, who have preserved and expanded the MUN's collections for almost four decades, including the photographic legacy of Ortiz Echagüe and the more than 25,000 works that the Museum now houses, in whose collection national and international authors in all artistic disciplines are represented. Vallhonrat will continue to be linked to the MUN as deputy general director.

The new artistic director of the MUN has a career spanning nearly thirty years as a curator, cultural manager, professor, researcher, writer and lecturer in museums and institutions in Europe, the United States and Latin America: he has been director and chief curator of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, director of visual arts at the Americas Society in New York, founding curator of the Essex Collection of Art From Latin American Art at the University of Essex, curator of Latin American art at the Blanton Museum of Art, part of the University of Texas, in Austin, and also coordinator of exhibitions, publications and public programs at the Casa de América in Madrid. He was also chief curator of the 33rd Sao Paulo Biennial, the 6th Mercosul Biennial and the Brazilian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennial and has held honorary and advisory positions at MoMA, the aforementioned Essex Collection of Latin American Art and Fundación Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.

His curated exhibitions have focused on geometric abstraction and contemporary Latin American art, and he has tried to ensure that they are accompanied by careful strategies of mediation with the public: I think of curating as something akin to translation; art has its codes and references, which are not necessarily familiar to everyone. Our job is to try to create the conditions so that communication can flow between the work and the viewer. In our country, he was the curator of two exhibitions at the Museo Reina Sofía: “La invención concreto”, curated together with Manuel Borja-Villel in 2013, and “Mário Pedrosa. De la naturaleza afectiva de la forma”, together with Michelle Sommer, in 2017.

His publications have had to do with mediation, education, collecting strategies and cultural policies around Latin American art in a global context.

Pérez-Barreiro's arrival as director at the Museo Universidad de Navarra comes ahead of the tenth anniversary of this center, in 2025. He advances his next challenges: My idea is to build on the foundations, but with emphasis on the museum-university dialogue, the public and the Ibero-American context. I plan to take advantage of my first hundred days to detect talent, opportunities and new challenges.

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