Alejandra Fierro Eleta, a promoter of the Gladys Palmera Foundation, 2023. Photograph: courtesy of the Gladys Palmera Foundation
To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Gladys Palmera, the Museo Reina Sofía organises, in collaboration with the Gladys Palmera Foundation, a day which spins around African-influenced dances and rhythms, for instance danzón, chachachá, mambo, rumba, cumbia, salsa and ballenato, genres which have shaped Latin American cultural identity, from the Caribbean islands to the Southern Cone,
Behind Gladys Palmera is Alejandra Fierro Eleta and her passion for preserving and disseminating the Afro-Latino music legacy. The Gladys Palmera Foundation project came into being twenty-five years ago with Radio Gladys Palmera, the first radio station in Spain to specialise in Latin and Caribbean music and which today still inspires and champions musical diversity in its different formats. In parallel to the radio project is the Gladys Palmera Collection, set up by Fierro Eleta, a major archive assembled in San Lorenzo del Escorial and comprising over 55,000 vinyl records and 25,000 CDs of Latin music past and present, in addition to a valuable collection of graphic art, posters, photographs, sheet music and magazines — a cultural legacy kept alive by the Gladys Palmera Foundation to enhance, restore, digitise and catalogue its holdings for consultation on the project’s website.
The event begins with a music-based conversation with curators from the Foundation, José Arteaga and Tommy Meini, and continues with a dance workshop by Cuban dancer Claudia Valdivia, culminating in a vinyl session and dancing, where records past and present will be played from the Collection.
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Sponsor
Agenda
viernes 11 oct 2024 a las 18:00
25 Years of Gladys Palmera
— A music-based conversation with José Arteaga and Tommy Meini
The curators of the Gladys Palmera Collection, José Arteaga and Tommy Meini, embark on a sound journey through the arc of the project, which began in 1999 as the prime radio station in Spain specialising in Latin music — still the case today — placing the stress on its valuable and diverse cultural legacy.
viernes 11 oct 2024 a las 18:45
Dance Workshop in the Salón Gladys Palmera
— Dance workshop with Claudia Valdivia
This dance workshop led by Cuban dancer Claudia Valdivia sets forth a trip through the Afro-Latin rhythms that have sculpted the musical landscape from the early twentieth century to the present day. The first part of the activity, entitled Vintage (Danzón, Chachachá and Mambo) focuses on these genres, while the second Romantic Salsa, Cumbia and Salsa Brava is devoted to more contemporary sounds from the world of Latin music. The musical selection will be hand-picked by Tommy Meini and José Arteaga.
viernes 11 oct 2024 a las 20:30
Salón Gladys Palmera
— Vinyl session and dancing
In this vinyl session, the curators of the Gladys Palmera Collection set off on a journey of dancing and listening through the musical landscape of the Caribbean and its influence on other continents.
Participants
José Arteaga is a writer and journalist from Pasto (Colombia) who is based in Spain. He is an expert in preserving music archives and the history of Caribbean music, which is the subject of different books he has written. A part of Radio Gladys Palmera since it was founded, he has produced different programmes, among them La Hora Faniática, a documentary and testimonial review of the history of the New York label Fania Records. His work also encompasses the online edition of gladyspalmera.com and coordinating the Gladys Palmera Collection, as well as his publications, among them Cha-Cha-Cha: un baile y una época (2020) and Música con nombre propio (2022).
Tommy Meini is a music lover and researcher who studied Fine Arts at Luminy University (Marseille). Noteworthy is his work as an exhibition producer, a curator of the photography festival Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles (Arles) and a specialist concert photographer. His fascination with music led him to study Music History in Santiago de Cuba, before joining Blue Moon Producciones in Barcelona, where he re-released Cuban sound archives and oversaw an editorial imprint. Since 2014, he has worked as a researcher and curator in the Gladys Palmera Collection.
Claudia Valdivia is a Cuban dancer who graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte de La Habana and the Escuela Nacional del Ballet de Cuba. For over twenty years, she has been part of the illustrious dance company Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba (LADC), where she has worked with instructors such Fernando Alonso and Lizt Alfonso, sharing the stage with figures such as Misty Copeland and creating different pieces for the company’s repertoire, and for the production Habana Fénix (2023). Further, she has performed on different stages worldwide and has directed international tours as a choreographer and dance and fusion dance instructor.
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
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.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
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.