Miguel López-Remiro, new director of the Picasso Museum in Malaga.
The Navarrese Miguel López-Remiro Forcada (Pamplona, 46 years old) will be the new director of the Picasso Museum Málaga from January 1st. The Executive Board of the Picasso Museum Foundation announced the appointment this afternoon, which will last until 2029. He will replace José Lebrero, who arrived in 2009 with Rosa Torres, then Minister of Culture of the Junta de Andalucía. He was chosen “for his suitability to assume this key role in the institution and based on the fundamentals of the international competition announced,” explained them from the Malaga Cultural Center. The announcement comes just two days after the peace signing with the workforce and the signing of a new labor contract, ending fifteen months of mobilizations. The cultural area closed 2023 with a record number of visitors: more than 779,000 people, the most visited museum in Andalusia.
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López-Remiro has a degree in economics and a doctorate in philosophy and literature, aesthetics and art theory from the University of Navarra. He was deputy curatorial director of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, founding director of the University of Navarra Museum and curator at institutions such as the Sorigué Foundation and the Otazu Foundation. He was currently a graduate student at the European University of Madrid in the Faculty of Architecture, Engineering and Design and its new Creative Campus, and is the editor of the first anthology of texts by Mark Rothko, published by Yale University Press and Flammarion. He will take over the management of the Picasso Museum in Málaga on January 1st and will be introduced almost three weeks later, on January 19th, at a press conference with the participation of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, the artist's grandson.
Visitors to the Picasso Museum in Malaga last August.García-Santos
The appointment ends a contentious process that began last spring with the publication of an international competition to fill the position that José Lebrero would vacate this year. Some of the conditions that the job entailed, such as a salary of 80,000 euros – almost 20,000 more than the current one – or an allowance of 35,000 euros in housing benefit, outraged much of the workforce, who had already been working for several months. Protests against their working conditions. López-Remiro was selected among the 13 people who submitted their candidacy. His arrival also marks the farewell of José Lebrero after 15 years at the helm of the center. However, it won't be his last farewell. Sources from the Picasso Malaga Museum have explained that the gallery is already immersed in the new 2024-2027 collection, which opens in March, and is working on the next two temporary exhibitions, curated by Lebrero.
The Picasso Malaga Museum experienced a reality with two faces in 2023, when it celebrated its twentieth birthday. On the one hand, it celebrated its visitor record with more than 779,000 visitors – 20% more than in 2022 and 60,000 more than in 2019, the year from which the record comes – thanks to the tourism boom in the capital Málaga and the celebration of the Picasso Year on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the artist's death. The event began with the Picasso sculptor exhibition. “Matter and Body,” curated by Carmen Giménez – the art gallery’s first director – which ended with 151,000 visits; and then with Picasso's Echo, curated by Éric Troncy and which can be viewed until the end of March. On the other hand, it experienced a period of labor mobilization of the workforce with protests and strikes that, although they hardly affected the daily operations of the center, highlighted the poor conditions of a workforce whose collective agreement had expired since December 2021.
Several people look at the work “The Lady Offering” in the “Picasso Sculptor” exhibition. Matter and Body'.Daniel Pérez (EFE)
The negotiations lasted fifteen months and this week the works council announced the signing of the new agreement. Although they celebrated it little because they made minimal progress compared to the previous working conditions, they managed to shorten and reduce the annual working day to 1,700 hours per year compared to the 1,743 of the Workers' Statute The weekly working day was increased to 37.7 hours, up from 38. Union sources said this week that “despite the struggle that has been going on for so many months and the resulting wear and tear on workers, working conditions remain poor.” “The art gallery is one of the most important and most visited museums in the country.”
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