We are living through a period of profound transformation in the way public discourse circulates, and art criticism is no exception. Traditional newspapers and media outlets—which for decades served as the primary space for constructing, disseminating, and legitimizing critical judgment on contemporary art—have seen their influence as cultural tastemakers diminish. Today, a significant portion of the conversation surrounding the visual arts takes place through new digital channels and formats: specialized platforms, online magazines, podcasts, social media, newsletters, and independent projects—all of which have come to play an increasingly vital role in the creation and distribution of content.

This new landscape compels us to revisit some fundamental questions: Who performs the critical function today? Who shapes opinion and narratives regarding contemporary art? From what platforms do they speak, which audiences do they reach, and by what authority?

This event aims to explore these issues by drawing on the experiences of cultural journalists, managers of digital platforms, artists, and content creators who are actively involved in shaping contemporary cultural discourse. Beyond analyzing the evolution of cultural journalism and art criticism, the event seeks to provide tools for understanding how the mechanisms of mediation, influence, and legitimation are currently structured within the visual arts—and to examine the challenges this new ecosystem poses for the future of the sector.

Objectives

– To analyze the impact of digital transformation on cultural journalism and art criticism.

– To identify the agents, platforms, and formats currently involved in constructing discourse around the visual arts. – To debate the role of social media, podcasts, independent publishing projects, and other emerging spaces for cultural mediation.

– To reflect on current mechanisms of recommendation, authority, and critical legitimation.

– To share the experiences and perspectives of professionals working within these new ecosystems of cultural communication.

Program
09:40 – 10:00

Registration and welcome coffee
10:00 – 11:30

The artist as a media agent. How artists generate narratives and critical discourse without journalistic intermediation. Activism and the self-management of discourse.

– Daniel García Andújar. Visual artist, activist, and new media theorist.

– Clàudia Rius. Cultural journalist and editor-in-chief at *Núvol*.
11:45 – 13:15

From the newsroom to the feed: where criticism happens today. Has criticism changed its medium, its nature, or has it disappeared altogether?

– Joan Maria Minguet Batllori. Art historian and critic.

– Toni Ribas. Deputy director of the newspaper *Ara*.

– Carolina Ciuti. Cultural journalist and editor at *Exibart España*.
13:15 – 14:15

Lunch and networking
14:15 – 15:45

Curated digital platforms as spaces for criticism and dissemination. Independent platform models as alternatives to traditional spaces for cultural criticism and mediation. Who legitimizes discourse on art? Critical authority, algorithms, audiences, and the precarious nature of the sector.

– Montse Badia. Curator, art historian, and co-founder of A*Desk.

– Iván de la Nuez. Writer, essayist, and curator.

– Judith Méndez. Cultural communicator specializing in art history.

– Carmen Corbera. Creator and host of the podcast *El Mundo del Arte*.

→ Session moderated by Roberta Bosco, a journalist specializing in contemporary art.

30/11/2026. More information here

La entrada Conference on journalism, criticism and visual arts se publicó primero en Montse Badia.

Monday, November 9, 10:45 – 11:45 h.

Panoràmic Pro. Roca Umbert. Fàbrica de les Arts, Granollers.

In the context of  Festival Panoramic

La entrada New strategies in visual arts programming se publicó primero en Montse Badia.

Saturday, November 7, 17:00 – 18:00 h.

In the context of the Art Salon By Invitation

La entrada Between Architecture and Collecting: Shared Sensibilities se publicó primero en Montse Badia.

AQUA ET TEMPUS or the archaeology of anticipation

Rivers exemplify one of the great paradoxes of our relationship with nature. We know they are living systems, yet we have learnt to view them as resources that can be managed. It is within this conflicted reality that much of Àlvar Calvet’s work unfolds.

In Aqua et Tempus, these concerns converge around the River Aniene. The exhibition showcases the work undertaken during Calvet’s residency in Lazio from 2024 to 2025 and builds on Seven Places, Seven Souls and The Seven Souls of the Aniene. The Aniene, a tributary of the Tiber, flows through a region containing numerous archaeological remains and hydraulic systems. Calvet approaches it as if trying to read a landscape that has been written and rewritten countless times.

Archaeology plays a central role. Heads, hearts, oil lamps shaped like river trout, banners, sediment coins and small water shrines seem displaced from their time. Calvet is drawn to the ambiguity of the objects. They are both remnants of what has gone before and harbingers of a relationship with water that we cannot yet imagine.

The pieces derive from experiences along the Aniene, from encounters with people connected to the river and from actions that form a secular liturgy. Walking, offering and burying are the three stages of The Seven Souls of the Aniene procession. Walking adjusts the body to a different scale; offering establishes a relationship not based on possession; burying introduces a gesture contrary to extraction.

The ritual is not a romantic evocation of nature, but a means of introducing a different way of paying attention. The objects give form to what lies beyond the languages of management, such as the experience of a place or the disappearance of a species. The trout-shaped lamp refers to a species that has disappeared from the Aniene; the seven water shrines relate to seven specific points along the river and the tensions inherent in each. One of these shrines has already formed part of a procession and a burial; the other six, prepared for future processions and burials, remain as forms of anticipation. The coins made from sediment, meanwhile, raise a question about value.

Water cannot be separated from geopolitics. Its flow, distribution and retention determine relationships between territories and communities. The river brings present-day conflicts to light: water as a common asset and an economic resource, and the desire to control its cycles.

In Seven Places, Seven Souls Calvet is led, with his eyes covered, by seven people to different sites along the Aniene. Blindness forces him to listen and accept the guidance of people who know and look after the river. Not being able to see helps him notice things that would otherwise escape him.

Somewhere between archaeology and anticipation, between memory and preservation, the objects in Aqua et Tempus remain as time capsules; they conserve the memory of what has already passed and keep the possibility of what is yet to come alive. The issue is not only what we have lost, but what we are still able to preserve.

La entrada Aqua et Tempus. Àlvar Calvet se publicó primero en Montse Badia.

Talking Galleries returns to MACBA on 5–6 October 2026 for the 12th edition of the Barcelona Symposium, its flagship annual event bringing together gallerists and leading voices from across the art world for two days of debate, exchange and networking. 

La entrada Talking Galleries – Barcelona Symposium 2026 se publicó primero en Montse Badia.

• Date: 18 September 2026
• Time: 10:00 – 11:30 hrs.
• Location: Auditori Meier, MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Plaça del Àngels, 1, Barcelona).
• Admission is free, but registration is required as seating is limited. Register here

Organized by CIMAM (the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art) in collaboration with MACBA Public Programs, this panel will explore what ethical principles should guide the management of a museum collection today.

Museum collections are among the most important cultural assets entrusted to museums. Yet recent international cases have revealed how vulnerable they can become when governance structures change, ownership shifts, or political and economic interests take precedence over their long-term stewardship.

As museums navigate increasingly complex questions around acquisition, stewardship, provenance, restitution, access, sustainability, and accountability, collection management is being redefined as a fundamentally ethical practice rather than solely a technical or administrative one.

Recent developments, including the newly adopted ICOM Code of Ethics, highlight the growing importance of public trust, cultural rights, community participation, transparency, and responsible stewardship in shaping decisions about collections.

In this conversation, Doryun Chong, Chair of CIMAM’s Museum Watch Committee and Artistic Director and Chief Curator of M+, Hong Kong; Amanda de la Garza, President of CIMAM and Deputy Artistic Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and Claudia Segura, Head of Collection at MACBA, Museu d’Art de Contemporani de Barcelona, will explore the particular challenges faced by modern and contemporary art museum collections.

Moderated by Montse Badia, art historian, critic, curator, and cultural researcher based in Barcelona, this panel will also consider how museums can respond to increasingly complex political, economic, and institutional contexts while protecting collections as bodies of knowledge and ensuring their long-term public value.

These are the same questions that have prompted CIMAM to launch a new international research initiative to develop a Glossary on Ethical Principles for Collection Management.

Invited Speakers:

Doryun Chong

Doryun Chong, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M+, Hong Kong SAR, China. Photo: Dan Leung. Image courtesy of M+, Hong Kong

Doryun Chong is Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M+, Hong Kong, Asia’s first global museum of visual culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. He joined M+ in September 2013 as its inaugural Chief Curator and also became Deputy Director, Curatorial in January 2016. Since October 2024, he has served as Artistic Director. He oversees all content-related aspects, including exhibitions, collections, learning and interpretation, publishing, and digital content, across the museum’s three main disciplinary areas of design and architecture, moving image, and visual culture.

Before joining M+, Chong developed his museum career in the United States. He studied art history and anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also completed graduate work in art history focused on non-Western modern and contemporary art, particularly in East Asia. He has held curatorial positions at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Amanda de la Garza Mata (Mexico, 1981) Lives and works in Madrid, Spain.

Amanda de la Garza. Deputy Artistic Director, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), Madrid, Spain

She is currently Deputy Artistic Director at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. She is the President of CIMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art) for the period 2026-2028. From 2020 to 2024, she was General Director of Visual Arts and of the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) at UNAM in México City, one of the most important art museums in Latin America. Trained in Curatorial Studies, Art History, Anthropology and Sociology, between 2012 and 2019 she worked as an associate curator at MUAC. She has curated and coordinated more than 30 exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, archival exhibitions, and public art projects. She has published essays, interviews and reviews in catalogues, books and specialized magazines. She was a member of the board of ICOM Mexico from 2021 to 2024.

Claudia Segura Campins

Claudia Segura Campins (Barcelona, 1984) is currently Head of Collection at MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona), following her role as Curator of Exhibitions and Collection at the same institution since 2019. Her curatorial work includes several presentations of MACBA’s Collection, as well as numerous solo exhibitions, most notably the first monographic exhibition of performance artist María Teresa Hincapié.

She holds a BA in Humanities from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona (2007) and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London (2008). From 2015 to 2019, she was Director and Chief Curator of NC-arte in Bogotá, Colombia, where she curated numerous site-specific projects by artists such as Amalia Pica, Luis Camnitzer, Xavier Le Roy, Nicolás Paris, Nicolás Consuegra, Los Carpinteros, Do Ho Suh, and Alia Farid, among others.

Previously, she worked as a cultural project coordinator at Fundación “la Caixa” in Barcelona (2010–2012), served as an external curator for the Mardin Biennial in Turkey (2014–2015), and acted as mentor at the Sala d’Art Jove in Barcelona (2014) and at the Cano Laboratory at the National University Museum in Bogotá (2018). She was also a visiting lecturer at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá (2017).

She has curated projects in Spain, Colombia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Mexico City, Turkey, Lisbon, Miami and London. She frequently contributes to exhibition catalogues, gives lectures, and writes for specialized art publications.

Moderator:

Montse Badia

Montse Badia. Photo by Agus Izquierdo.

Montse Badia is an art historian, critic, curator, and cultural researcher based in Barcelona.

She has contributed to numerous international publications, including Transversal, arts.zin, Untitled (London), NU: The Nordic Art Review (Stockholm), Tema Celeste (Milan), ARCO, and Bonart. Her curatorial work has been presented at institutions including De Appel (Amsterdam), Apexart (New York), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Fundació Joan Miró, MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, MNAC – Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and Fundación “la Caixa”, among others. She has served as associate curator of Espai 13 at Fundació Joan Miró and of the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica. She has also been a member of the advisory committee of the Yaxs Foundation and artistic director of the contemporary art collection Cal Cego.

She is co-founder and director of A*DESK. Independent Institute of Criticism and Contemporary Art, and director of the Master’s Degree in Contemporary Art: Context, Mediation and Management at IL3 – Universitat de Barcelona.

Recently she has also participated in several studies on the Catalan contemporary art ecosystem commissioned by CONCA (Catalan National Council for Culture and the Arts) and served as rapporteur for the framework document on remuneration standards for visual arts professionals promoted by the Government of Catalonia.

Montse Badia is a member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) and ACCA (Catalan Association of Art Critics).

La entrada Rethinking Collection Governance: Ethics, Stewardship and Institutional Responsibility se publicó primero en Montse Badia.

The Cult of Beauty addresses one of these great universal themes. As Umberto Eco pointed out, beauty is an aspiration shared by all cultures, although it has never been an absolute or immutable category. Its relevance is especially significant today, when it continues to be a social construct profoundly influenced by the beauty industry, the attention economy, and social media. The exhibition stems from a cultural and political stance that doesn’t so much aim to define beauty as to analyze the mechanisms that sustain its cult.

The show is, in fact, an adaptation of the exhibition of the same name presented at the Wellcome Collection in London in 2023. The original curator, Janice Li, has been joined by researchers blanca arias and Júlia Llull, whose contributions expand the initial narrative and incorporate more pluralistic, critical perspectives, open to dissent.

The exhibition begins deliberately chronologically, guiding the visitor through classical ideals of beauty, based on principles of proportion, gender, and virtue. However, this seemingly stable narrative is interrupted by artworks that introduce fissures and raise questions. The works of Lorenza Böttner and Carlos Motta, among others, problematize these normative models and demonstrate the extent to which beauty has historically functioned as a device for inclusion and exclusion.

As the exhibition progresses, dichotomies such as beautiful/ugly or virtue/failure begin to crumble, although others continue to operate strongly, especially the association between beauty and youth. Forms of exclusion persist, albeit in new configurations. From colonial exoticism, capable of objectifying any form of otherness, we move to contemporary mechanisms of invisibility linked to race, gender, or identity. In response, trans, queer, and non-binary collectives have developed strategies of self-expression, resistance, and the construction of collective memory. In this context, Colita’s portraits dedicated to the Roma community, Angélica Dass’s Humanae project, with its wide spectrum of skin tones, and Norma Pérez’s trans portraits engage particularly effectively with the exhibition’s themes.

The exhibition then delves into the complex relationship between beauty, medicine, and science. From the cosmetic practices of ancient Egypt to the anatomical ideals of the Renaissance, the journey leads to the present, where the obsession with image—an extreme result of the society of the spectacle—is amplified by the commercialization of pharmaceuticals, aesthetic treatments, and surgical procedures. The new standards are no longer necessarily associated with proportion or virtue, but increasingly with purchasing power. Beauty thus appears as a privilege that can be bought, with consequences that affect both physical health and emotional well-being. How can we identify these forms of control in order to conquer greater spaces of autonomy? Where does individual desire end and collective pressure begin? The works of Marina Vargas and Arvida Byström point precisely to this overflowing of normative limits, making visible the restrictions that underlie any standard.

The installation Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, by Xcessive Aesthetics, places the visitor before a distorting mirror that reflects the visual pollution that accompanies our daily experience. An incessant flow of images, filters, algorithms, and aspirational models that we consume through social media, from which it is increasingly difficult to escape, raises numerous questions: Who establishes the standards of beauty today: cultural institutions, the beauty industry, algorithms, or social media? How do filters, artificial intelligence, and digital editing affect our perception of ourselves? Can there be an aesthetic of difference that is not absorbed by the market? Are we witnessing a democratization of beauty or a sophistication of its control mechanisms? Is it possible to imagine a society less obsessed with appearance? What do we lose when we have we turned beauty into an obligation?

But The Cult of Beauty is not confined to the exhibition space. As is usual at the CCCB, the project is expanded through a robust public program featuring thinkers and specialists such as Eloy Fernández Porta, Remedios Zafra, and the curators themselves. In addition, there is an educational program for LGBTQ+ youth, coordinated by Cordova and developed in collaboration with artists like ¥E$Si PERSE and Toni Hervás, as well as the film series Beautiful and Eternal, curated by Desirée de Fez for Las Gandules 2026. The selection of fantasy and science fiction films addresses issues such as youth, aesthetic pressure, and the obsession with preserving beauty, extending many of the questions raised by the exhibition onto the screen.

Rather than offering definitive answers, The Cult of Beauty invites us to critically reconsider an idea we often take for granted. Because, if beauty has never been a neutral category, perhaps the real challenge lies in asking ourselves who defines it, who benefits from it, and who inevitably falls outside its boundaries.

The exhibition The Cult of Beauty, curated by Janice Li, blanca arias, and Júlia Llull, along with its accompanying public program, can be visited and followed at the CCCB until November 8, 2026.

[Artícle published in A*DESK 5-8-2026]

La entrada Beauty in dispute se publicó primero en Montse Badia.

The CoNCA Annual Report is a public document that analyses the state of culture and the arts in Catalonia, reviewing the main trends, data and cultural policies of the previous year. It also evaluates the action of public administrations in cultural matters and identifies structural challenges in the sector. Finally, it proposes strategic recommendations to strengthen the Catalan cultural ecosystem and guide future policies.

La entrada Visual Arts. Collaborations and training in times of precariousness and museum expansion 2025 se publicó primero en Montse Badia.

The main objective is to propose indicative salary scales that promote the dignity of cultural work and that the centers commit to applying.

The proposal is an initiative of the General Directorate of Cultural Rights, Creation and Libraries of the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia and has been developed jointly by representatives of centers of the Public System of Visual Arts Facilities (SPEAV) , and the professional associations PAAC (Platforma Assembléària d’Artistes de Catalunya) and ACCA (Association Catalana de Crítica d’Art). Montse Badia has carried out the reporting of this document.

La entrada Salary scales se publicó primero en Montse Badia.

Culture and Rights for Democratic Health

MACBA Convent Auditorium – June 30, 2026.

This event is structured around two interconnected themes.

The first explores the relationship between the visual arts and individual, social, and community health.

The second addresses cultural rights as inalienable rights for everyone.

Both dimensions converge on a shared conviction: culture acts as an active force against distress, individualistic withdrawal, and the rise of regressive trends.

Organized by: Directorate General for Cultural Rights, Creation, and Libraries, Department of Culture, Government of Catalonia.

Welcome and introduction by Xavier Fina, Director General for Cultural Rights, Creation, and Libraries.

Conversations:

• Art as an active force in medical and care settings. Conversation between Sergi Blancafort and Montserrat Verdú, with Pilar Cruz.

• Art and health through artistic practices. Conversation facilitated by José Antonio Delgado with Gemma Paris and Felipe G.

• Art as an active force for community health. Conversation between Javier Rodrigo and Quim Packard.

• Art for democratic health. Conversation facilitated by Amanda Cuesta with Mar Sureda and Nerea Campo.

• Economic health in artistic practices. Presentation on professional remuneration scales with Montse Badia and Ester Martínez.

Institutional closing remarks by the Hon. Sònia Hernández Almodóvar, Minister of Culture of the Government of Catalonia.

Photos Xavier Menal

La entrada Active Principles: Culture and Rights for Democratic Health se publicó primero en Montse Badia.