##The new director of the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), Nuria Enguita, presented this Thursday her plan of action, which includes opening up the focus of the museum to art beyond the Mediterranean and collaborating with more international institutions, such as the ‘ Centre Pompidou ‘ in Paris or the ‘Whitechapel Gallery’ in London, as well as consolidating the centre among the most important in Spain.

She proposes future exhibitions and events that “inseparably” combines the local with the global and includes the gender perspective. She stressed that the centre will be extended with the opening of a second space in Valencia (probably in a rehabilitated industrial building in the Russafa district), for further projects…

She aims to recover “the utopian potential of the origins”, when the museum became, in a very short time, a reference in the contemporary art scene, not only in Spain. However, everything else, the world, people, art and circumstances are very different 30 years later, so nothing can be the same…” she declared.

“We must rethink the museum’s mission in the context of the pandemic we are experiencing, and in this framework I think that the IVAM, as an institution, must strengthen its relationship with society. We must make it more open, to let the knowledge that is outside come in and vice versa. The weight of a cultural institution like this is also related to what it represents, what it means and what it can evoke…”

As far as the exhibition programme is concerned, she stressed the weight that the IVAM’s own collection, one of the most outstanding in Spain in terms of avant-garde art, will continue to have, and the combination of major historical exhibitions with commitment to lesser-known creators. On a national level, the intention is to establish greater collaboration with public and private contemporary art museums. Furthermore, it aims to create “strategic alliances” with private collectors in Valencia and the rest of Spain in order to complete the IVAM’s collection with artistic periods that are not currently in the institution’s collection.

The new director also intends to set up a new website with a repository of the museum’s collections, the development of documentation for online consultation and a better display of all the museum’s activity since it began in 1989, with the aim of effectively connecting the collection, exhibitions and documentary archive, as well as turning it into a virtual space of the museum open to the world. “The aim is for the IVAM to be fully in the 21st century within the next five years”, she summed up.

The director will be working on a public programme of mediation and stable activities of seminars and conferences in collaboration with universities and other educational centres; an art observatory in collaboration with associations linked to the visual arts; the organisation of workshops with artists; and a parallel programme of living arts at the IVAM’s headquarters. It is also committed to a new educational structure for the institution and to reinforcing activities with programmes such as IVAM escoles and IVAM universitats.

Finally, she proposes the development of a specific strategic plan for the museum that will set out the objectives to be achieved over the next few years and will include contributions from cultural agents in the public, private and social spheres.

Nuria Enguita (Madrid, 1967) has a degree in History and Theory of Art from the Autonomous University of Madrid. From 1991 to 1998 she was curator of the IVAM, from 1998 to 2008 she was artistic director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona and has set up and ran Bombas Gens-Centre d’Art in Valencia.