Manuel Segade, new director of the Museo Reina Sofía

MADRID.- Manuel Segade, 46, from A Coruña, is the new director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. He replaces Manuel Borja-Villel, who held the post for 15 years. The appointment of Segade, until now the director of the Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, dependent on the Comunidad de Madrid, was proposed by the Minister of Culture and Sport, Miquel Iceta, and approved in a ministerial cabinet meeting on Tuesday June 6. Yesterday it was published by the Official State Bulletin.

The selection process began on February 10 after the publication in the Official State Bulletin of the convening of applications for the post of director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. With guaranteed publicity and openness, the process has rested on the principles of merit and ability and criteria of suitability. The participation of the Royal Board of Trustees of the Museum was also ensured, with consultancy provided by an International Committee of Experts and Professionals from the world of culture and cultural management. This was made up of five professionals of recognized prestige.

The selection process consisted of several phases:

- Ascertainment of fulfillment of the requisites for taking part in the process by the Management Committee of the Royal Board of Trustees, and preparation of a list of those admitted and excluded.

- Assessment of the applications, the merits of the applicants, and the project presented in each case by the International Committee of Experts and Professionals.

- Interviews conducted by this Committee with the five highest scoring applicants.
- Presentation of the list of these five candidates to the Management Committee of the Board of Trustees.

- The names of the finalists, ordered by the scores they had obtained, were presented on June 5 at a Plenary Meeting of the Royal Board of Trustees, which passed them on in its turn to the Minister of Culture and Sport for the final selection of the new director of the Museum.

- Finally, the Minister, Miquel Iceta, presented his proposal at a ministerial cabinet meeting on June 6 to secure the appointment by royal decree of the new director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

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Members of the International Committee of Experts and Professionals
The selection process for the new director of the Reina Sofía included the provision of consultancy by an International Committee of Experts and Professionals from the world of culture and cultural management. This was made up of the following members:

Christophe Cherix (Switzerland, 1969). Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, from 2013 to the present.

Cuauhtémoc Medina González (Mexico, 1965). Art historian, critic and writer. Chief Curator of the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City, since March 2013.

Joanna Mytkowska (Poland, 1970). Curator and art critic. Director of the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, since 2007.

Gloria Moure (Spain, 1946). Art historian, critic, curator, and editor. Director of the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo (CGAC), Santiago de Compostela, from 1994 to 1998.

María Nicanor (Spain). Architecture historian and curator of architecture, design and urbanism. Currently the director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York.

Profile of Manuel Segade
Manuel Segade (A Coruña, 1977) has been the director for the last ten years of the Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (Móstoles), dependent on the regional government of the Comunidad de Madrid. He holds a degree in history of art from the University of Santiago de Compostela. He has been the programming coordinator of the Metrònom space of the Fundación Rafael Tous d’Art Contemporani in Barcelona, and the chief curator of the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (Santiago de Compostela). In the course of two decades (2003-2023), he has also curated numerous exhibitions at national and international institutions.

As a teacher, he has also contributed prominently to university and institutional curricula with the organization of national and international courses and seminars. He has been a tutor in curating and advisor to the postgraduate program in curatorial training at the École du Magasin of the Magasin Centre National des Arts Plastiques in Grenoble (France). He has also taught on university programs in South Africa and Brazil.

Moreover, he has published a number of articles, catalogues, and books, including Narciso Fin de Siglo (Editorial Melusina, 2008) and Las Infinitas Especies (Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castellón, 2014). In addition, he has received several prizes and special mentions, among them the Una Gota MAV distinction (2022) for the commitment to gender equality of the Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), and a special mention in the CIMAN Outstanding Museum Practice Award (2021) for the projects developed at the CA2M in response to the pandemic of 2020.

Furthermore, he is a founder member of the European Art Assembly, a meeting point of several directors of European contemporary art centers to deal with urgent issues of contemporary art, and a founder member of the European Forum For Advanced Practices, supported by the COST network of the European Community.