Borja-Villel awarded honorary doctorate by the UOC

Borja-Villel has been director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, one of the world's leading centres for modern and contemporary art, since 2008. In recognition of his professional career, the UOC is to award him an honorary doctorate at 7 p.m. on Wednesday 4 July at the Casa Llotja de Mar at Passeig d'Isabel II 1 in Barcelona. The ceremony will be led by UOC President Josep A. Planell.

Manuel Borja-Villel has always shown himself to be a firm believer in reinterpreting the role of museums, seeing them as being able to play an important role in the transformation of the social imaginary. He defends the idea of an archive of the commons that goes against the idea of the museum as the sole owner of a collection. He supports the idea of working as a network with other groups, universities and museums. In the field of education, he seeks to focus on pedagogical models based on dialogue and questioning both the contents and the structures for mediation. These models cover not only the conditions required for these processes, but also those of the artistic sphere, which leads to a blurring of the hierarchies between the two, mutually enriching and strengthening them.

In 2011, he remodelled the permanent collection at the Museo Reina Sofía, expanding it in size and scope: film, photography and documents stand side by side with painting and sculpture. He and his team have also undertaken important work in rehistoricizing and contextualizing the key work in the collection: Guernica. Picasso's mural is understood in terms of the Republican Pavilion, in terms of the artistic and political debates of the time, and in terms of the interpretations of the painting during the time in exile and transition to democracy.

Before arriving at the Museo Reina Sofía, he was director of the Antoni Tàpies Foundation from 1990 to 1998, a period when the museum opened up to society thanks to its innovative programme of exhibitions. He was then director of MACBA, from 1998 to 2007, where he looked to create a museum that was both cosmopolitan and rooted in the material reality of the local people and place.

Professional career

Manuel Borja-Villel was born in Borriana, Castelló, in 1957 and has been director of the Museo Reina Sofía since 2008. In January 2018 he renewed his contract to lead the museum for another five years. He arrived in Madrid from Barcelona, were he had been director of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) from 1998 to 2007, and before that the director of the Antoni Tàpies Foundation from 1990 to 1998.

He graduated in Art History from the University of Valencia in 1980, was a Special Student at the University of Yale in 1981 and 1982 and received a Fulbright scholarship from 1981 to 1983. He was awarded a Master of Philosophy from the Department of Art History at the City University of New York in 1987. He received a Kress Foundation Fellowship for Art History for 1998/1989 and obtained a PhD from the Department of Art History at the City University of New York Graduate School in 1989.

He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2010, the delegate for the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport on the board of trustees of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation since 2009, president of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM) between 2007 and 2010, and member of the board of trustees of the Tàpies Foundation in Barcelona since 1998. In 2004 he became a member of the board of the Foundation for Arts Initiatives.

UOC-Reina Sofía Bachelor's Degree in Art

The UOC already has links with Manuel Borja-Villel thanks to the signing of the agreement to jointly run the online Bachelor's Degree in Art with the Museo Reina Sofía.