Nuria Enguita is the new artistic director of the Mac/CCB, the Museum of Contemporary Art/Belém Cultural Center in Lisbon, for a period of four years, which opened its doors in the fall of 2023 within the CCB, replacing the Berardo Collection Museum (2007-2022), following the liquidation of the structure. The Mac/CCB holds in deposit all of the works of the Portuguese collector that had been seized by the State in 2019, as security for unpaid debts.
What convinced you to apply for the leadership of Mac/CCB?
When I saw the call for applications, it seemed like a great opportunity for change. I have always worked internationally, including for the São Paulo Biennial (Brazil) in 2013 and for the Medellín International Art Meetings (Colombia) in 2011.
You have worked at Ivam and the Tàpies Foundation in Barcelona, where the collections focus on Spanish art. Does directing the Mac/CCB collection, made up of international works, seem like a more complex challenge to you?
No, because I always work in synergy with a time, a place, people who constitute an ecosystem. As a historian, I look at history to understand the contemporary. I have organized many exhibitions in relation to the past because, as many people say, “the past is before our eyes”. Shedding light on these latent discourses is what interests me. So I think of my work according to a local context, more than according to a particular nationality.
What are your plans for Mac/CCB?
We are developing the program that will be presented at the end of the year, for the moment we cannot say more, but the Mac/CCB is a new museum that takes over an old legal structure, it is in full mutation. The collections must be the driving force of all the programming, in touch with current concerns, in national and international contexts, in continuous dialogue. With the reception on deposit of the Ellipses and Teixeira de Freitas collections, respectively composed of 860 and more than 2,000 works of very diverse nature, produced from 1900 to the present day, which are added to the Berardo Collection rich in 900 works, we are thinking about the coherent discourse that can be formed from this important collection.
What is the legal status of the works in the Berardo Collection? Are you still in contact with the collector?
The Berardo Collection is still on deposit in our museum and we can work with the works without any problem. We are still in contact with Joe Berardo, yes.
