Spanish curator Nuria Enguita is the new artistic director of MAC/CCB | Art

Spanish curator Nuria Enguita, 57 years old, will be the artistic director of the new Museum of Contemporary Art at the Centro Cultural de Belém (MAC/CCB), in Lisbon, the board of directors of the Fundação Centro Cultural de Belém announced late this afternoon, in a statement sent to newsrooms. The curator, born in Madrid in 1967, begins working in May on what succeeded the Berardo Collection Museum and will remain in Lisbon, for now, for a period of four years.

With the appointment of Nuria Enguita, all modern and contemporary art museums belonging to the most important cultural foundations in the country (Gulbenkian, Serralves and Centro Cultural de Belém) are now directed by foreigners. Philippe Vergne was appointed in 2019 to the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, in Porto, and Benjamin Weil arrived in 2020 at the Gulbenkian Modern Art Center, in Lisbon. The choice of the Spanish curator was the result of a open call international program launched by CCB in 2023.

Until very recently, Nuria Enguita was director of the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderna (IVAM), in Valencia, a cultural institution from which, in the 90s, the first director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Vicente Todolí, left. It was at IVAM, under the direction of Todolí, that she began her career as a curator, more precisely in 1991. She left in 1998 to direct the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, in Barcelona, ​​where she stayed until 2008.

The new director of MAC/CCB resigned from IVAM in February following “a defamatory campaign”, she told the newspaper El País, which involved the vice-president of the Generalitat, Vicente Barrera, from the far-right Vox party, also regionally responsible for the Culture portfolio. Barrera asked the Public Ministry to investigate the donation of two rural plots of land to a foundation run by Todolí, arguing that it could constitute retribution for him having been part of the jury that chose the curator for the position.

“The matter for us has no importance or basis”, tells PÚBLICO Delfim Sardo, administrator of the CCB, noting that this donation of land, without any value, was made as part of an action to crowdfunding and that the jury that chose Nuria Enguita for IVAM, three years ago, had eight members.

“She was chosen [para o CCB] for its effective quality”, continues the administrator, also a curator and university professor. In total, there were 39 candidates for the position, most of them foreigners. “In shorlist final, which we chose with the help of two external consultants (Isabel Carlos and Lilian Tone), we reduced [o leque de candidatos] for six interviews, which were of a very good standard. It was not an easy choice, but it was clear that Nuria Enguita has experience and rigor in managing collections and a very comprehensive cultural vision.”

Nuria Enguita, who was born in Madrid in 1967, is an art historian, editor and curator. She arrived at IVAM, which she directed between 2020 and 2024, coming from the Bombas Gens Art Center, also in Valencia, after the aforementioned visit to Catalonia. The CCB statement recalls that, as an independent curator, she organized, between 2008 and 2015, exhibitions in Spanish and Portuguese institutions. She was co-curator of the 31st São Paulo Biennial, in 2014, the Encuentro Internacional de Medellín, in 2011, and the Manifesta 4 biennial, in Frankfurt, in 2002.

With a degree in Art History and Theory from the Autonomous University of Madrid, she has taught art theory and management in numerous centers and universities and has published texts in contemporary art magazines such as ParkettThe Afterall and the Concrete, points out the statement. “His institutional practice is defined by direct work with collections and the social contexts in which they are generated and presented. His work seeks to make visible artistic practices usually relegated to the margins of official histories and canonical modernity.”

According to the CCB, the project presented by Nuria Enguita highlighted “not only its consistency and its sense of opportunity, for which its extensive curatorial and management experience in other institutions is relevant, but also its knowledge of the reality Portuguese”.