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Tuesday, 19 February 2019 – 7pm / Sabatini Building, Floor 3
Indigenisms 1. The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s
Exhibition tour led by Beverly Adams and Natalia Majluf
Prior registration required by writing to programasculturales3@museoreinasofia.es
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Thursday, 21 February 2019 – 7pm / Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200
Indigenisms 1. Mariátegui and Southern Avant-Garde Movements
Mesa redonda
With the participation of Martín Bergel, Renato González Mello and Natalia Majluf, and moderated by Ana Longoni.
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Activity cancelled due to reasons beyond our control
Indigenisms 2. The Return of Indigenousness in the 1970s and 1980s
Mariana Botey in conversation with Eliza Fuensalida
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Monday, 22 April 2019 - 7pm / Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200
Indigenisms 3. Another Knowledge for Another World: Indigenous Reason Versus Colonial Reason
Santiago Castro Gómez in conversation with Montserrat Galcerán

Held on 22 abr 2019
Inside the framework of the exhibition The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s (Museo Reina Sofía, 20 February – 27 May 2019), this session of activities seeks to examine relationships between indigenous identity, art, visual culture and the politics of representation on the continent, extending across three chronological landmarks: historical avant-garde movements (1919), neo-avant-garde movements and the crisis of the modern paradigm (1989) and contemporaneity (2019).
As far as the construction of modernity in Latin America is concerned, the conception of historical avant-garde movements alters when surveyed historically and from Latin American contexts. The sense of primitivism, the role of popular culture, the presence of historicism, the connection between different national spheres and the desire for social revolution lend a radically novel meaning that differs to that of European avant-garde movements. Thus, these variables are all explored in a tour around the exhibition The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s, led by the show’s curators, Beverly Adams and Natalia Majluf. In addition, art historians Martín Bergel, Renato González Mello, Ana Longoni and Natalia Majluf will hold a round-table discussion to debate indigenism in the theory and art criticism of Peruvian intellectual José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930), and its reverberations around Mexico and Argentina.
With the aim of addressing the reappearance of indigenousness as a rupture from modernity in the crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, a lecture will be conducted by Mexican artist and theorist Mariana Botey, who will engage in dialogue with Peruvian researcher and activist Elisa Fuenzalida. The neo-avant-garde movements and experimental art from these decades would re-write Latin America’s past as a history of violence and the colonial domination of bodies, territory and ideology. The figure of the other — represented in indigenisms, Negritude, the woman, the lesbian, the feminist, the queer, the poof, the transsexual – gives rise to a reconsideration of aesthetic and cultural practices in the region from the association between art and social and identity movements.
Lastly, the contemporary approach to indigenism as an ensemble of knowledge linked to animist, decolonial and naturalist thought, articulating other relationships between subject and world, is analysed in a conversation between Colombian sociologist and cultural theorist Santiago Castro-Gómez and Spanish philosopher Montserrat Galcerán. The focus of the debate will thus rest on indigenism as a system of intersubjective, natural and universal knowledge, and on the way in which indigenist thought can construct a new logic of affection, care and relationships outside the expansion of colonial reason, which is rooted in the exploitation and conquest of the other, be it nature, society or territory.
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Participants
Beverly Adams is an art historian. She has been the curator of Latin American art in the Blanton Museum of Art, at the University of Texas, since 2013, and, with Natalia Majluf, she is the curator of The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s. From 1989 to 1995 she was in charge of the Diane and Bruce Halle Collection (Scottsdale, Arizona).
Mariana Botey is an artist, theorist and curator. She holds a PhD in Visual Studies from the University of California, Irvine (2010), and is a professor of Modern/Contemporary Latin American Art History in the Visual Arts Department at the same university in San Diego. Her experimental documentaries have been screened in the Guggenheim Museum and The Anthology Film Archives (both in New York), Museo Carrillo Gil (Mexico City), the RedCat Theater (Los Angeles), and Museo Reina Sofía, among other art centres, galleries and festivals. She is also the co-editor of Fantasma, Fetiche, Fantasmagoría: Ensayos en Estética y Emancipación (Siglo XXI, 2014) and the author of Zonas de Disturbio: espectros del México indígena en la modernidad (Siglo XXI, 2014). Since 2009, she has worked as a founding member of the editorial and curatorial committee of El Espectro Rojo, an international network that studies the critical intersections and contemporary presence of indigenism.
Martín Bergel is a historian and researcher in the Argentinian organisations the National Scientific and Technical Research Councul (CONICET) and the Centre of Intellectual History at the University of Quilmes, and guest researcher at the Ibero-American Institute of Berlin and Harvard University. Moreover, he is a professor of Contemporary Latin American History at the University of San Martín (UNSAM). He is the author of El Oriente desplazado. Los intelectuales y los orígenes del tercermundismo en Argentina (Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2015) and Los viajes latinoamericanos de la Reforma Universitaria (HyA ediciones, 2018), and is currently putting together an anthology of texts by Mariátegui, to be published by Siglo XXI.
Santiago Castro-Gómez is a philosopher. He is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Javeriana and the University of Santo Tomás, both in Bogotá, and has lectured at Duke University and the University of Pittsburgh, in the USA, and at the University of Frankfurt, Germany. His numerous publications include La hybris del punto cero. Ciencia, raza e ilustración en la Nueva Granada (1750-1816) (CEJA-Centro Editorial Javieriano, 2005), El giro decolonial: reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global (Siglo del hombre, 2011), Crítica de la razón latinoamericana (Siglo del hombre, 2011) and La poscolonialidad explicada a los niños (Universidad del Cauca, 2005).
Elisa Fuenzalida is a researcher, writer and activist. Her work analyses the relationships between sexuality, gender, violence and colonialism, in addition to the ties and displacements between memory and diaspora in different ‘sudaka’ (South American) collectives in Madrid. Her publications include Buscando la felicidad de manera equivocada (Honolulu Books, 2013) and Parásitos (Libros del Autoengaño, 2014).
Montserrat Galcerán is a philosopher and teacher. She is a professor of Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid, an activist, and has been a councillor for Madrid City Council since 2015. She is the author of La bárbara Europa. Una mirada desde el postcolonialismo y la decolonialidad (Traficantes de sueños, 2016), Deseo y libertad. Una investigación sobre los presupuestos de la acción colectiva (Traficantes de sueños, 2007), Innovación tecnológica y sociedad de masas (Síntesis, 1997), La invención del marxismo, (Iepala, 1997) and Filosofía para Bachillerato (Akal, 1998), among other works.
Renato González Mello is an art historian. He holds a PhD in Art History from the Autonomous University of Mexico, where he is a lecturer, and, since 1992, a researcher in its Institute of Aesthetic Research. His publications most notably include José Clemente Orozco. La pintura mural mexicana (Conaculta, 1997), José Clemente Orozco in the United States, 1927-1934 (with Diane H. Miliotes, Norton, 2002), Orozco, ¿pintor revolucionario? (UNAM, 2005) and La máquina de pintar. Rivera, Orozco y la invención de un lenguaje, emblemas, trofeos y cadáveres (UNAM, 2008).
Ana Longoni is an art historian and currently director of Public Activities at the Museo Reina Sofía. Moreover, she is a founder and member of the Southern Conceptualisms Network, and author of a wide-ranging corpus of written and exhibition work on the relationships between art, activism and memory in Latin America, for instance Del Di Tella a “Tucumán Arte”: vanguardia artística y política en el ´68 argentino (with Mariano Mestman, El cielo por asalto, 2000), El siluetazo (with Gustavo Bruzzone, Adriana Hidalgo, 2008), Roberto Jacoby: el deseo nace del derrumbe (Museo Reina Sofía, 2011), Óscar Masotta: la teoría como acción (MUAC, UNAM, Mexico, and MACBA, Barcelona, 2017) and Losing the Human Form. A Seismic Image of the 1980s in Latin America (inside the Southern Conceptualisms Network, Museo Reina Sofía, 2012).
Natalia Majluf is a curator and art historian who currently occupies the Simón Bolívar Visiting Chair at the University of Cambridge. Her studies focus on the history of Latin American art, from the period of independence until the mid-twentieth-century. From 1995 to 2018 she was head of Collections and later director at the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI). She has directed the shows Fernando Bryce. Dibujando la historia moderna (2011), Sabogal (2013) and Chambi (2015), and, with Beverly Adams, she is the curator of the exhibition The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s.
Más actividades
Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics
8 October 2025 – 24 June 2026
The study group Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion: Prefiguring New Pacifisms and Forms of Transitional Justice proposes a rethinking—through both a theoretical-critical and historical-artistic lens—of the intricate network of concepts and practices operating under the notion of pacifism. A term not without contestation and critical tension, pacifism gathers under its name a multiplicity of practices—from anti-militarism and anti-war movements to non-violence activism—while simultaneously opening urgent debates around violence, justice, reparation, and desertion. Here, pacifism is not conceived as a moral doctrine, but as an active form of ethical and political resistance capable of generating aesthetic languages and new positions of social imagination.
Through collective study, the group seeks to update critical debates surrounding the use of violence and non-violence, as well as to explore the conflict of their representation at the core of visual cultures. In a present marked by rearmament, war, genocide, and the collapse of the social contract, this group aims to equip itself with tools to, on one hand, map genealogies and aesthetics of peace—within and beyond the Spanish context—and, on the other, analyze strategies of pacification that have served to neutralize the critical power of peace struggles. Transitional and anti-punitive justice proposals will also be addressed, alongside their intersections with artistic, visual, and cinematic practices. This includes examining historical examples of tribunals and paralegal activisms initiated by artists, and projects where gestures, imaginaries, and vocabularies tied to justice, reparation, memory, and mourning are developed.
It is also crucial to note that the study programme is grounded in ongoing reflection around tactics and concepts drawn, among others, from contemporary and radical Black thought—such as flight, exodus, abolitionism, desertion, and refusal. In other words, strategies and ideas that articulate ways of withdrawing from the mandates of institutions or violent paradigms that must be abandoned or dismantled. From feminist, internationalist, and decolonial perspectives, these concepts have nourished cultural coalitions and positions whose recovery today is urgent in order to prefigure a new pacifism: generative, transformative, and radical.
Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion, developed and led by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Studies Management, unfolds through biweekly sessions from October to June. These sessions alternate between theoretical discussions, screenings, work with artworks and archival materials from the Museo’s Collection, reading workshops, and public sessions. The group is structured around sustained methodologies of study, close reading, and collective discussion of thinkers such as Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Juan Albarrán, Rita Segato, Sven Lütticken, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Franco “Bifo” Berardi; historical episodes such as the anti-nuclear and anti-arms race movement in Spain; and the work of artists and activists including Rojava Film Commune, Manuel Correa and the Oficina de Investigación Documental (Office for Documentary Investigation), and Jonas Staal, among other initial cases that will expand as the group progresses.
27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference
Wednesday, 4, and Thursday, 5 March 2026
The 27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference, organised by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation and Restoration, with the sponsorship of the MAPFRE Foundation, is held on 4 and 5 March 2026. This international encounter sets out to share and debate experience and research, open new channels of study and reflect on conservation and the professional practice of restorers.
This edition will be held with in-person and online attendance formats, occurring simultaneously, via twenty-minute interventions followed by a five-minute Q&A.
Submitting Proposals
The deadline for presenting proposals ends on 28 September 2025. Those interested must send an email to jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es, submitting the following documents:
- An unpublished proposal related to the conservation or restoration of contemporary art.
- A 1,700-word summary, written in Word, on the theme addressed. Please indicate the topic at the top of the document with five keywords and the presentation format (in-person or virtual). Preference will be given to the in-person format.
- CV and contact details.
- Only one proposal per person will be accepted.
- Proposals related to talks given in the last three conferences will not be accepted.
Proposals may be submitted in Spanish, French or English and will be evaluated by a Scientific Committee, which will select the submissions to be presented during these conference days and will determine their possible participation in a subsequent publication, the inclusion of which will undergo a second and definitive evaluation by the Editorial Committee.
For submissions in a virtual format, participants must send a recording following certain technical requirements they will receive once participation is confirmed.
The programme of sessions will be published in the coming days.
Rethinking Guernica
Monday and Sunday - Check times
This guided tour activates the microsite Rethinking Guernica, a research project developed by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Collections Area, Conservation and Restoration Department and the Digital Projects Area of the Editorial Activities Department, assembling around 2,000 documents, interviews and counter-archives related to Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica (1937).
The visit sets out an in-situ dialogue between the works hung around the painting and a selection of key documents, selected by the Museo’s Education Team and essential to gaining an idea of the picture’s historical background. Therefore, the tour looks to contribute to activating critical thought around this iconic and perpetually represented work and seeks to foster an approach which refreshes our gaze before the painting, thereby establishing a link with the present. Essentially revisiting to rethink Guernica.
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
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The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.