A Conversation between Manuel Borja-Villel and Marcelo Expósito

Marcelo Expósito and Manuel Borja-Villel discuss how social critique can develop within an art institution through experimentation, community support and a heterogeneous public sphere. Manuel Borja-Villel is among the most influential museum directors of the early twenty-first century. First at the Antoni Tàpies Foundation, then at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) also in Barcelona and later at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), in Madrid, he has followed a different path from his colleagues, rejecting the neoliberal model of the art museum as a real-estate investment opportunity and refusing revenue-based exhibition choices in favour of politicised, critical and experimental practices.