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Manuel Borja-Villel and the "Habitat Museum" end their journey in Catalonia
The museologist raises questions about the management of these facilities and calls for a change beyond the structures after the completion of the "Habitat Museum" project.
After months immersed in the Habitat Museum project, Manuel Borja-Villel is putting an end to his time in Catalonia. Between exhibitions that have reinvented the concept of space and landscape, such as Fabular paisatges , and reflections that have questioned the way of living and inhabiting museums, Borja-Villel is leaving behind his work as museum advisor to the Generalitat.
It will be next December when he will present the conclusions of the project that he has guided with vision and rigor, before definitively closing this chapter and returning to Madrid. A farewell that, more than a retreat, feels like a poetic compass: the passage of an intense time of cultural reflection that raises questions for the future of Catalan museums.
After directing the Tàpies Foundation, the MACBA and the Reina Sofía Museum, Manuel Borja-Villel returned to Barcelona in 2023 as a global reference in the museum field, at the proposal of the Generalitat de Catalunya —then chaired by Pere Aragonés— and Jordi Martí, as Councilor for Culture of the Barcelona City Council. His task consisted of leading a “temporary program for the development and integration into the museum system of the arts of the project to expand and promote the National Museum of Art of Catalonia (MNAC)”. Although the reality of the person in charge of the assignment has been different from what Borja has carried out.
His intervention in the Catalan museum scene, which already had a museum plan, was finally materialized through the Habitat Museum project, a broad program that combined activities, publications and research of interest, and which culminated in the exhibition Fabular paisatges , curated jointly with Lluís Alexandre Casanovas and Beatriz Martínez Hijazo.
Manuel Borja-Villel does not spare himself criticism or irony about the museum world: “The positive thing about all this is that everyone has taken a picture, and that is very good”. Regarding the management of resources, he warns that “in some museums, if they expand, 100% of the budget will go to structural expenses” and criticizes that “some museum directors unfortunately seem like human resources directors”.
