Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1987-90 Courtesy Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford
Works by the late American conceptualist Felix Gonzalez-Torres will be shown around city sites in Barcelona, from the Rambla boulevard to the L’Auditori concert hall venue, as part of an exhibition organised by the Museum of Contemporary in Barcelona (MACBA), which will run from 26 March-12 September (subject to Covid-19 restrictions).
“In the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion [the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona] we will be showing Untitled (Loverboy) 1989; at the Rambla del Raval, it will be
Untitled (America), 1994 [an installation of 12 light strings], kindly lent by New York’s Whitney Museum and shown for the first time in some years outdoors. There will also be elements of this installation on the facade of Macba,” says Tanya Barson, the chief curator of MACBA, who organised the exhibition.
Some museums’ budgets have been cut by more than 75 percent, the group says.
December 11, 2020
A visitor taking a photograph of the Stone of the Sun or Aztec Calendar as it is also known during a reopening ceremony at Museo Nacional de Antropologia on November 11, 2020 in Mexico City, Mexico. Photo by Clasos/Getty Images.
Amid blows to museum budgets worldwide, Mexican state museums are particularly vulnerable, according to the Museum Watch Committee of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art.
The organization, which has sent a statement to the country’s culture secretary, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, says the situation is dire and that Mexican museum leaders are afraid to speak out for fear of retribution. Several museums contacted by Artnet News did not reply, or said that their directors were not available.