The market governs in art much more than institutions, academia, or criticism.

The director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (Macba), Ferran Barenblit, holds a very personal and at the same time solid concept of what a museum should be: a place for reflection, independent training and study, a showcase for major international exhibitions but "contaminated" by the most emerging and local. In his opinion, the idea has become a reality in this house in the last five years, which are those of his directorship.

He leaves, despite himself. Leaving however "a Macba of the future". He has just presented the program for the next 18 months, an expansion project whose architectural competition will be decided next month, and a private collection that he has added to the museum's holdings: the Rafael Tous Collection, more than 1,000 pieces of conceptual art from the 60s and 80s. He has also left a new order within these very white walls: a historical narrative of the museum's permanent collection, which chronologically traces the evolution of art from 1929 to today. In short and in his words, "a museum that is more of a museum, conceived for the very long term." And Barenblit takes credit for having kept culture and the box office open in the midst of the shutdown.

I do not know the reasons for the change in direction, but its nature is intuited: "Cultural institutions and programs, to be ambitious in the long term, should be independent of political developments." He came in 2015 from having directed the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo of the Community of Madrid and, even before that, the Centre d'Art Santa Mónica; curator of l'Espai 13, of the Fundació Joan Miró and, previously, curatorial assistant at The New Museum, New York, where he worked alongside its director Marcia Tucker. He had arrived in New York to study Museology at New York University, coming from Art History at the University of Barcelona, a city to which he moved when he was in second grade, coming from Buenos Aires, where Fernando Barenblit was born in 1968. His memories of that childhood, newly arrived, are of "a hard exile," even though his family felt very well received by the city. His new and next exile, fortunately, will be study and writing. Perhaps the director will surprise us with a good story.

We start by talking about the immediate perspective of museums, half-empty today, after years subjected to the fierce law of hyper-consumption: races for the number of visits, unbearable queues, rankings... Will we be lucky enough for them to become places for reflection, learning, debate, and enjoyment again? "I believe they had never stopped being that place of reflection and knowledge, despite the lack of resources we inherited from the 2008 crisis pushing us towards a model where the quantitative component prevails or where success equals quantity." Or what he aptly calls the "Blockbuster model" (box office success). A model, he says, resulting from the misapplication of neoliberal capitalism. "Here, that model has never been chosen, because the root of Macba lies in critical thinking, political attitude, and dialogue with the context. I trust that this notion of success is changing and that there will be a reunion with humanism."

The lack of resources we inherited from the 2008 crisis pushed us towards a model where the quantitative component prevails or where success equals quantity

Also because of fierce neoliberalism, museums had become a kind of franchise, clones of each other. He himself exhibited at l'Espai 13 of the Miró Foundation the great stars, Cattelan, Koons and others. "That exhibition (Irony, 2001) was the opposite of stardom; there were great artists of international relevance and other local ones, equally important but who had not yet crossed borders. One cannot renounce the work of figures like Koons or Cattelan, who have written very important pages."

--Does it make sense today to resort to the ready-made that Duchamp "invented" more than a hundred years ago?

--Of course it makes sense. The logic of the ready-made, the confrontation of art with reality or what it should be, continues to be attractive and exciting. Artists like Wilfredo Prieto, who rethinks it from a brave and questioning practice, or Piero Manzoni, with his constant quotation marks, are fascinating.

While it is true that art must appeal to its history, what value would it have to practice, say, neoplasticism now? If each current has its moment and its historical context, which one or ones would be today's, post-conceptualism perhaps? What is new in plastic arts? "The value in art is innovation, without a doubt, and it makes no sense to move to past moments in art history without a process of resignification. But the ready-made is not a current but a path, which is sustained, like cubism and its rupture of the conventional form of representation of planes, or like abstraction as opposition to figuration. Let's realize that art evolves linked to history, and that between 1900 and 1945 Europe experienced a continuous series of cataclysms and radical changes."

And regarding the present, post-conceptualism, he adds: "I will not give names, it does not seem appropriate to me, but we live in the midst of a very complex reality in which the conceptual heritage is still very welcome; from there, layers of political thought can be incorporated and, the most urgent thing today, would be to propose a reflection on the way we want to live, how we want our emotional relationships to be. We must make way for an art that discusses the conventional values of colonialism, that is an expression of alert, struggle, utopia. The world is much broader today, but it is still a place for utopia."

The director of Macba also maintains, regarding scandals that have occurred right here, without going any further (let's remember that Barenblit arrived after the resignation of Bartomeu Marí, derived from the exhibition La bèstia i el sobirà. 31 artistes desfan les lògiques del poder), that cinema, literature, and other arts enjoy greater freedom than plastic arts. On what does Barenblit base this assessment? "There are themes that, when treated in visual arts, become extremely delicate matters, while in the context of other cultural manifestations they can be approached naturally, avoiding a fierce debate. Why? I only have intuitions about it: we live in a very baroque country, where the image as a representation of power gains more strength than in other cultures. But it is a very positive reality that ultimately demonstrates the power of art and museums: we are powerful."

We live in a very baroque country, where the image as a representation of power gains more strength than in other cultures

Speaking of power, it would be appropriate to ask him where those "centers of art power" are today, to which he himself has referred and whose existence is no secret. His answer is blunt: "The market. The yardstick for measuring art is set by the market, which is a very difficult agent to control. The market governs in art much more than institutions, academia, or criticism. And then there are certain spaces of authority that create very powerful references, such as large exhibition platforms, biennials, or fairs like Venice or documenta in Kassel."

--Do you expect the city of Barcelona to prioritize investment in culture as a necessary good enshrined in the Constitution, or, on the contrary, do you believe a cultural desert is approaching in the public sphere?

--I hope they understand that it is essential to consolidate the necessary structures to continue advancing. Furthermore, investment in culture is always very profitable; it's something you will never regret; even in circumstantial events like the current one. Institutions are essential for training, research, and supporting emerging bases, and for the maintenance of museums and exhibition centers at the service of the public. But the political instability we are suffering does not help cultural development at all, because its result is short-termism: cultural institutions and programs, to be ambitious in the long term, should be independent of political developments. Moreover, cultural institutions are usually far superior to the politicians in charge of culture.

Investment in culture is always very profitable; it's something you will never regret

Ferran Barenblit landed in Barcelona with the echo of the military coup resonating in his ears. He was only 8 years old when he escaped Buenos Aires with his family, but he clearly remembers the martiality that had been implanted in his school, the violence that saturated the air, the fear. "Exile was very hard," he says without mincing words. Despite the generosity they apparently found here, the family's quick integration into their new destination, and the fortune of a youth that coincided with the splendor of the 80s, is that Barcelona unrepeatable? "No. Barcelona is a city that constantly questions itself, because it is the heir to a tradition of struggle, and this is something that remainsI was lucky enough to start working as Jordi Samsó's assistant in the late 80s, and this gave me the opportunity to discover that there were living artists!But the context of the 80s here was very complacent and uncritical, society succumbed to the amnesia of the Transition. Barely a handful of artists were aware of the gravity of an era led by Thatcher and Reagan, and began to look to conceptual art and the counterculture spirit of the 60s and 70s."

Recently interviewing an expert Catalan curator and art manager, he stated that perhaps more art is being produced than ever before, and in a more marginal way than ever: "The art being made now in Barcelona is not in the Macba," he said verbatim… What would you answer him if you could? "That this museum is a place for thought and debate, that we don't only deal with consecrated art, that we allow ourselves to be permeable to what is created outside of museums."

--Barenblit, what responsibility do public institutions have in promoting and internationalizing contemporary local art?

--A lot, our exhibitions of local art always travel abroad; we put a lot of energy into touring and loans.

--Why are you leaving?

--I would have loved to stay longer, but it hasn't been possible.