The Mexican Amanda de la Garza (Monclova, Coahuila, 42 years old) has been named this Wednesday as the new deputy artistic director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, in Madrid, after being selected from a group of 52 candidates for the position, in a selection process that began on November 24 and concluded this Wednesday morning with the announcement of his appointment.
De la Garza, curator and art historian, has been general director of Visual Arts and the University Museum of Contemporary Art, MUAC, at UNAM since 2020, one of the most important cultural and artistic institutions in Latin America.
“This position of deputy artistic director is what will allow us to work with collections, temporary exhibitions, registration of works of art, public programs, education and will also help us to produce the entire space with all the artistic entities within the museum,” explained the director of the Reina Sofía Museum, Manuel Segade, in a press conference in which he also read part of De la Garza's professional history.
Amanda de la Garza specializes in anthropology and art history—always at UNAM.
She had worked, almost since the museum was founded, at the MUAC, curating some 30 exhibitions, has been a regular collaborator for publications on art and documentary photography, and director of one of the leading cultural centers in Mexico City.
At the MUAC, she began her management with one of her clearest objectives: “to shed light on the margins,” to dig and find “the missing ones,” the women whose work was not recovered, and to reduce the “infinite historical debt” that the history of the Mexican art has with its artists.
“It is a purpose of the museum to acquire in a much more targeted way the work of women artists from different eras.
I consider it a priority,” she said in an interview for EL PAÍS, in May 2022.
In a statement, the Madrid Museum has highlighted the Mexican woman's career and has assured that her election is the result of a process in which a commission of specialists decided that her profile was the most suitable to be part of the team that leads one of the most important art venues in the Spanish capital.
“The deputy artistic director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía will be the person in charge of carrying out the exhibition program, public programs, presentations and lines of growth of the Collection, restoration projects, supervision of the registration and work of the Library and archives, as well as the research apparatus necessary for its development.
In this sense, it is a position of trust that will be in close contact with the Management."
The director of the Museum, Manuel Segade, announces that Amanda de la Garza will be the new deputy artistic director of the Reina Sofia
👉 Press release: https://t.co/REHzNwb69a pic.twitter.com/wbxIbfrl0D
— Reina Sofía Museum (@museoreinasofia) February 7, 2024
Amanda de la Garza has training in Curatorial Studies, Art History, Anthropology and Sociology.
From 2012 to 2019 she worked as associate curator at the MUAC.
He has participated in the curation and coordination of more than 30 exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, as well as archival exhibitions and reviews of renowned artists, including Harun Farocki, Hito Steyerl, Vicente Rojo, Jeremy Deller, Isaac Julien, Jonas Mekas, José Dávila and Chantal Peñalosa for museums in Mexico and abroad.
She was co-curator of the XVII Biennial of Photography of the Center for the Image and Readings of a Fractured Territory, the first review of the contemporary art collection of the Amparo Museum in Puebla.
She has published numerous essays, interviews and reviews in catalogues, books and specialized magazines.
She has been awarded the Emerging Curators Award, the Fronteras Biennial and has been the recipient of several research grants in Mexico and abroad.
Currently, she is a member of the boards of directors of CIMAM, International Committee for museums and Collections of Modern Art, of ICOM Mexico and is a member of AAMD (Association Art Museum Directors).
“I am convinced that the world of culture has to move forward with a deeper commitment to the issues of the environment and climate change.
“They are some of the deepest problems that are going to change the way we think about ourselves as a species,” she said for this newspaper in May 2022.
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