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MACBA begins a new stage with Valentín Roma at the helm
MACBA begins a new stage with Valentín Roma as director. The museum's Consell General del Consorci has confirmed his appointment for the next five years, in a decision surrounded by cultural expectation and criticism of the selection process.
Roma thus returns to an institution he knows well and which he left in 2015 after the controversy surrounding the exhibition La bèstia i el sobirà. That crisis shook the museum and ended with several internal departures, becoming one of the most remembered episodes in recent cultural management in Barcelona.
He now returns in a different role and context. His candidacy received the highest score in the competition and was defended for the soundness of the project presented, as well as for a career marked by curating, writing and directing cultural spaces.
For the past nine years, Roma has directed La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, where he consolidated a recognisable, demanding programme closely linked to critical thought, contemporary imagery and the intersections of art, politics and memory. That experience now weighs on expectations for MACBA's future.
The appointment, however, does not close the debate. Several associations of critics, artists and cultural managers have questioned the transparency of the competition and called for clearer processes to choose the directors of major public facilities. The controversy directly affects the sector's confidence in cultural institutions.
Roma will take over after Elvira Dyangani Ose's departure; she left the directorship in April because of incompatibilities with other international posts. The museum enters this new stage with significant challenges: strengthening its relationship with Barcelona, maintaining its international profile and defining the role it wants to have in an increasingly diverse and demanding art scene.
Born in Ripollet in 1970, Valentín Roma is a curator, writer and art historian. He has worked on figures such as Alexander Kluge, Susan Sontag, Marguerite Duras and John Berger, and has also developed his own work as an author of novels and essays.
The change at MACBA is about more than a name. The museum occupies a central place in Raval and on the contemporary-art map, but it also carries debates about governance, neighbourhood, audiences and the cultural model. Roma's arrival opens a new phase; it remains to be seen whether he can turn that expectation into a directorship capable of generating trust inside and outside the museum.