Home ANNUAL SUMMITS 2008 Summit Keynote Address: Antoni Muntadas

Keynote Address: Antoni Muntadas

Keynote Speaker: Antoni Muntadas, Barcelone, New York
Respondent: Richard Gagnier, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), chair of the DOCAM Conservation & Preservation Committee
Antoni Muntadas © DOCAM 2008

Antoni Muntadas was born in Barcelona in 1942 and lives in New York since 1971. Through his works, he addresses social, political and communications issues, such as the relationship between public and private space within social frameworks, and investigates channels of information and the ways they may be used to censor or promulgate ideas. His projects are presented in different media such as photography, video, publications, the Internet, installations and urban interventions.

Muntadas has taught and directed seminars at diverse institutions throughout Europe and the United States, including the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, the Fine Arts Schools in Bordeaux and Grenoble, the University of California in San Diego, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Cooper Union in New York, the University of São Paulo, and the University of Buenos Aires. He has also been welcomed as a resident artist and consulting advisor by various research and education centres, including the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, the Banff Centre in Alberta, Arteleku in San Sebastian, The National Studio for Contemporary Arts Le Fresnoy, and the University of Western Sydney. He is currently Visiting Professor at the Visual Arts Program in the School of Architecture at the MIT in Cambridge and the Instituto Universitario de Arquitectura del Veneto in Venice.

Muntadas has received several prizes and grants, including those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Arts Electronica in Linz, Laser d’Or in Locarno, and the Premi Nacional d’Arts Plàstiques awarded by the Catalan Government. One of his most recent awards is the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas for the year 2005, granted by the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

His work has been exhibited in numerous museums, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Berkeley Art Museum in California, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, the Museo de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro and the Museo d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, while other international events in which he has presented work are the VI and X editions of Documenta in Kassel (1977, 1997), the Whitney Biennial of American Art (1991), the 51st Venice Biennial (2005) and those of São Paulo, Lyon, Taipei, Gwangju and Havana.

Subsequently to On Translation: I Giardini, which was displayed at the Spanish Pavilion in the last edition of the Venice biennial, his latest solo exhibitions include Protokolle, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Muntadas. Proyectos Urbanos (2002/2005)… Hacia Sevilla 2008, Centro de las Artes de Sevilla and Muntadas. Histoires du couteau, Le Creux de l’enfer, Centre d’art contemporain, Thiers. In 2006, he presented the installation On Translation: SocialNetworks at the Inter-Society of Electronic Arts in San José, California, a two-year public project realized in collaboration with students of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media at the San José State University. In 2007, he exhibited Muntadas/BS. AS. simultaneously at the Telefónica Foundation Space, the Recoleta Cultural Center and the Spanish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires. In 2008, he has presented Petit et Grand at the Cervantes Institute in Paris and Muntadas: The Construction of Fear and the Loss of Public Space at the José Guerrero Cultural Centre in Granada.

Richard Gagnier is the Head of Conservation at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts since Fall 2007. He graduated from the Université de Montréal with a B.Sc. (Honours) in Chemistry, and a minor in Art History, with a strong component on modern and contemporary art, theory and discourse. He completed the course requirements of the Masters program in the Art Conservation (MAC) Research stream at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. In 1984, he joined the team of the Restoration and Conservation Laboratory, at the National Gallery of Canada, where he successively developed an expertise as Assistant Conservator and Conservator of Contemporary Art until 2007. His practice encompasses contemporary art media, such as painting, sculpture, installation, as well as timed-based media. He is currently a researcher within DOCAM, where he leads the activities of the sub-committee Case studies – Conservation. He is the Canadian representative for INCCA in North America (INCCA-NA).