
Held on 24 Feb 2022
The 23rd Contemporary Art Conservation Conference, organised by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation and Restoration and supported by MAPFRE Foundation, will be held on 24 and 25 February 2022. As an international encounter it sets out to share and debate experiences and research, open new channels of study and reflect upon the institutional management of conservation and the professional practice of restorers.
This edition is held in a virtual format via 20-minute contributions from speakers, followed by a five-minute Q&A session live with the audience. It features participation from universities, museums, art centres, and restorers’ associations, among others.
People who sign up will receive an email with instructions and a link to the online platform enabling them to follow and participate in the event.
- All talks with be streamed bilingually in Spanish and English.
- Questions will be taken at the end of each presentation via the chat.
- For any technical issues during the streaming, please contact: jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es
- Times will be synchronised with CET (Central European Time).
- An attendance certificate will be issued to people registered previously. This certificate must be requested via email by writing to jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es from 26 February to 4 March.
Programme
Thursday, 24 February 2022
3:45pm Opening
4pm Presentation and welcome
Jorge García Gómez-Tejedor (head of the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation and Restoration), Leyre Bozal (collections conservator in Fundación MAPFRE’s Culture Area) and Mayte Ortega Gallego (coordinator of the 23rd Contemporary Art Conservation Conference)
4:15pm Reflecting Upon the (In)Visibility of the Conservator’s Creative Agency (in English)
Andreia Nogueira (Centro de Tecnologia, Restauro e Valorização das Artes - Techn&Art, from the Polytechnic Institut of Tomar - IPT, Portugal)
4:45pm Discovering a Mexican Suitcase: Characterising a Collection of Work by Pictorialist Photographer Hugo Brehme
Alejandra Nieto Villena (Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, Mexico). Co-authors: José Refugio Martínez Mendoza and Álvaro Solbes García (Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, Mexico), and Juan Cayetano Valcárcel Andrés (Polytechnic University of Valencia)
5:15pm Eugenio Granell’s Films Newly Preserved
Carolina Cappa (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, San Sebastián)
Co-authors: Pablo Adiego, Amaia Badiola, Julia Cortegana de la Fuente and Borja Rodríguez Gimeno (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, San Sebastián).
5:45pm Traditional Pigments in Contemporary Art: Enamel Blue
Patricia de los Reyes Félix (independent restorer)
Co-authors: Beatriz de los Reyes Félix and Marta Plaza Beltrán (Complutense University of Madrid)
6:15pm Presentation of the Work Group Contemporary Art and New Media. Monograph and New Projects from GE-IIC
Rita Amor García (The Spanish Conservation Group GE-IIC)
6:30pm Round-table Discussion. The Evolution of Creation and Documentation Processes in Complex Artworks. The Experience of Kinetic Artist Elías Crespín
Elías Crespín (artist), Jorge García, Carmen Muro, Mayte Ortega and Regina Rivas (Museo Reina Sofía)
—Moderated by: Arianne Vanrell (Museo Reina Sofía)
7:15pm Conclusions
Friday, 25 February 2022
3:45pm Opening
4pm A Paradigmatic Agreement to Conserve Art Stations in Naples. Case Study: Restoring Enzo Cucchi’s Work Untitled in the Salvator Rosa Underground Station
Giovanna Cassese (Accademia di Belle Arti, Naples)
Co-authors: Maria Corbi (Ufficio Patrimonio Artístico, Azienda Napoletana Mobilità - ANM, Naples) and Manlio Titomanlio (Accademia di Belle Art, Naples) and Alfreda Capone (student)
4:30pm Deploying Metal Soaps in Oil Painting. Experimental Methodology to Determine the Influence of Variable Relative Humidity
Marta Pérez Estébanez (Complutense University of Madrid)
Co-authors: Susanna Marras, Ruth Chércoles and Margarita San Andrés (Complutense University of Madrid) and María Antonia García (Cultural Heritage Institute of Spain)
5pm Study Methodology to Determine the Behaviour of Pen Inks Exposed to Radiation
Luis Erick Miraval Gómez (Complutense University of Madrid)
Co-authors: Ruth Chércoles Asensio, Marta Pérez Estébanez and Carmen Pérez González (Complutense University of Madrid), and Ramón J. Freire Santa Cruz (University of Castilla-La Mancha)
5:30pm The Textile Creations of Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo and Henriette Negrin. Their Conservation and Restoration
Silvia Montero (Museo Reina Sofía)
6pm Farewell and conclusion
Submission of Lectures (closed)
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The deadline for submitting lecture proposals ends on 21 November 2021. Those interested must send an email to jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es attaching the following documents:
- An unpublished proposal related to contemporary art conservation and restoration.
- A 1,700-word summary, written in Word, on the addressed subject matter, which should be stated at the start of the document using a keyword.
- CV and contact details.
The proposals can be presented in Spanish and English and will be evaluated by a scientific committee, which will select the lectures to be presented during the conferences and will determine their possible inclusion in a subsequent publication, which in turn will undergo a second, and definitive, evaluation by the editorial committee.
For online presentations, participants must send their recording in accordance with the technical requirements they will receive upon notification of participation.
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Collaboration
illycaffèSponsor
The Mapfre FoundationMás actividades

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.

Dear Felix:
Saturdays at 6pm
The immediately recognisable art of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, which is on display, from May to October 2026, in the show Sweet Revenge, moves beyond the transmission of messages laden with poetic evocation, vital or biographical reflection, or even a clear political or ethical positioning. Rather, it seeks an active response by visitors to the exhibition. His work invites engagement with these messages so that, whether delighting, moving or challenging, it still prompts viewers to participate in the dialogue and complete the artistic undertaking with their own actions.
Thus, the guided tour Dear Felix: offers a shared, dialogue-inflected tour through the show, with the aim of collectively thinking and feeling the gestures the artist’s work puts forward. Ostensibly simple actions such as crossing through a beaded curtain to take a sweet and eat it, taking a poster from a stack of paper or simply observing a billboard closely, all contain ways of understanding life, loss, love, injustice or the passing — never linear — of time. The tour’s ultimate aim is not to set meanings or create an overload of interpretations of the work, nor does it seek to crystallise an image of the artist and his life in a response to questions which are not there. It looks instead to provide a space to open shared meaning in these apparently simple objects and to attempt a possible correspondence of return from the here and now. A lumbering attempt at responding which starts with a simple Dear Felix:

1926–2026: One Hundred Years of the Lyceum Club Femenino
Thursday, 2 July 2026
The Lyceum Club Femenino (Lyceum Women’s Club) was established in Madrid in 1926, constituting a space which opened new pathways for women to participate in Spain’s intellectual, artistic and political life in the first third of the twentieth century, and for figures such as designer Victorina Durán, pedagogue María de Maeztu, lawyer and politician Victoria Kent and artist Ángeles Santos, to name but a few. To mark the Madrid Club’s one hundredth anniversary, this research symposium examines its role as a key place for studying women’s and feminist culture in Spain’s Silver Age by analysing and vindicating the different agencies, trajectories and cultural projects that structured the space.
By way of three lectures and two round-table discussions, the symposium sets forth a journey through the Lyceum Club Femenino and the cultural context from which it emerged, from its standing as a pioneering institution to the study of cultural material from the period and the process of constructing the figure of the “modern woman”. These talks and discussions look to shed light on how new ways of thinking, creating and occupying public space were shaped, expanding the gaze on cultural, educational and social networks linked to the Lyceum — as much concerning its ties with other intellectual and artistic circles as the continuity and transformation of these networks during Republican exile. Finally, the symposium features three artistic interventions conceived to recover the artistic legacy of this space in Madrid.
The Museo Reina Sofia joins the Ministry of Culture’s cultural programme focused on the centenary of the Lyceum Club Femenino via these sessions, co-organised with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

Robert Capa
Friday, 26 June 2026 – 6pm
This international encounter centred on the figure of Robert Capa (Budapest, 1913 — Thai Binh, Vietnam, 1954), one of photojournalism’s pre-eminent figures, is held within the framework of the government initiative Spain and Freedom. Fifty Years and in conjunction with a cluster of three locations — the building on number 10 Calle Peironcely, the Plaza del Fotógrafo Robert Capa and the San Carlos Borromeo Parish in Vallecas — declared as a Place of Democratic Memory.
The emblematic photo Robert Capa took in 1936 of this area of Republican Madrid, featuring anonymous children talking in front of a bullet-riddled building attacked by Nazi-fascist air forces, has, in recent years, become a catalyst for impassioned collective action vindicating memory and denouncing the horrors and brutality of wars, past and present.
Within this context, representatives from cultural and academic spheres and civil society organisations from Germany, the USA and Spain discuss the legacy of Capa and photojournalism in European democratic memory, exploring in greater depth two citizen initiatives constructed by Europe from its shared memory: #SalvaPeironcely10 (#SavePeironcely10), in Entrevías (Puente de Vallecas), and the Capa Haus Initiative in the Lindenau neighbourhood of Leipzig, both united by the protection and conservation of historical heritage and by the defence of peace.
The round-table discussion features the participation of Cynthia Young, Juan Miguel Sánchez Vigil, Ulf-Dietrich Brumann and José María Uría Fernández and is moderated by Myriam Soto Lucas. Carmina Gustrán Loscos, the commissioner of Spain and Freedom. Fifty Years, will also join the discussion.

equipoMotor
Jueves alternos, 23 de octubre, 2025 - 11 de junio, 2026 - 17:30 h
El programa equipoMotor regresa en su edición 25-26 con un aire espectral y mutante para lanzar la pregunta: ¿y si el Museo fuera «un poco más Frankenstein»? Inspirándose en dicho monstruo y en todas aquellas criaturas que desafían la norma desde los márgenes, el proyecto de mediación cultural Galaxxia diseña y acompaña una edición incisiva, intergeneracional y descentralizadora, donde saberes invisibilizados, cuerpos raros y deseos molestos se entrelazan para generar nuevas formas de imaginación crítica y radical. En los sótanos y corredores del Museo —un particular laboratorio— las dudas no se esconden: son materia prima.
Así, para este curso el equipoMotor convoca a personas de todas las edades que hayan participado en ediciones anteriores de los distintos equipos del Área de Educación a recorrer el Museo como quien manipula un cuerpo abierto: descoyuntando algunas de sus categorías teóricas y artísticas —la necropolítica, lo crip-cuir, la lucha de clases, las políticas del malestar, la decolonialidad, la temporalidad cuir, la descentralización institucional o el feísmo— para articular un relato díscolo, remendado y palpitante.
El programa se estructura en bloques temáticos sobre lo freak como metodología, el trabajo cultural, la intergeneracionalidad y la diversidad territorial. Cada bloque a su vez se despliega en sesiones que combinan disparadores teóricos y estéticos, visitas a exposiciones y espacios liminales del Museo, talleres artísticos con artistas, ejercicios de curaduría audiovisual colectiva y de relatoría radiofónica, así como instancias de activación pública, mediante proyecciones de cine experimental y coloquios compartidos con el público, en complicidad con el archivo Hamaca y el Área de Cine y Nuevos Medios del Museo.
De este modo, la presente edición incorpora una particularidad: el grupo de participantes irá transformándose en un «colectivo curatorial audiovisual temporalmente autónomo», con capacidad de incidir en la programación del Museo y de abrir la conversación de equipoMotor al público general, cuestionando y expandiendo así los límites entre las cabezas que deciden, las manos que producen y los cuerpos y presencias que habitan la institución. Las personas seleccionadas en la modalidad oyente serán invitadas a las proyecciones públicas, así como a otras activaciones y momentos de apertura del equipoMotor.
Frente al relato de un museo homogéneo, pulcro y lineal, apostamos por un Museo disidente, contradictorio y lleno de vida residual. Un Museo que no tema hacerse preguntas incómodas ni mostrar sus cicatrices. equipoMotor. Un poco más Frankenstein no busca repensar el cuerpo de la institución, sino habitarlo en sus desgarros, tal como es: híbrido, inacabado, infecto, fantasmagórico… y cargado de esporas y chispas por venir.
