Exhibitions, activities and forums

Exhibitions, activities and forums during ARCOmadrid
15–19 Feb 2012

www.arco.ifema.es

Madrid brings together contemporary art professionals from around the world for the 1st Meeting of European and Latin American Museums, directed by Agustín Pérez-Rubio – Director of MUSAC, León – and Marcelo Mattos Araujo—Executive Director of Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo—with guests including Chris Dercon, Director of the Tate Modern, London; Manuel Borja-Villel, Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Hans-Michael Herzog, Director and Curator of the Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zurich; Alfred Pacquement, Director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne/Centre de Création Industrielle, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Graciela de la Torre, Director of the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo MUAC, Mexico.  The Collecting Forum will also attract other professionals, such as Han Nefkens, Mera and Don Rubell, Joop van Caldenborgh, Farhad Farjam and Eugenio López; and the Professional Meetings will bring together key figures invited by Marc-Olivier Wahler, Director of the Palais de Tokyo: James Lingwood, Co-director of Artangel, London; Bartomeu Marí, Director of the Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona (MACBA); Lynne Cooke, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Museo Reina Sofía; Inti Guerrero, Atistic Director of TEOR/éTica, San José (Costa Rica), and RMS La Asociación, together with Tania Pardo, an independent curator.

The participation of these professionals will be a complement to the exhibition side of ARCOmadrid, in which about 200 international galleries will take part in the General Programme, Focus The Netherlands, Solo Projects: Focus Latin America and Opening.

There are two notable new features in this edition. The “Highlighted Artist”, an initiative that reflects the quality of ARCOmadrid as a place for discovering new artists and as an authentic presentation space for gallery programmes. Each gallery has been invited to prepare a special presentation of an artist, all of which will be collected in a new publication serving the functions of guidebook and essential informational tool. The other new feature, the Solo Objects programme, will include twelve large format projects which will be exhibited in three spaces at the fair.

In addition to the offer at the fair the city of Madrid, has prepared a series of exhibitions for the occasion, such as the show by the German artist Hans Haacke and the Spanish artist Muntadas at the Museo Reina Sofía; Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection at the Fundación Banco Santander, the collections of contemporary art from MACBA-Fundación La Caixa at CaixaForum and many more. The presence of the Netherlands will also be felt in the leading institutions, with works by artists such as Aernout Mik, Falke Pisano, Gabriel Lester, Nathaniel Mellors, Navid Nuur and René Däniels, among others.

For the first time there will be also the AfterARCO programme that will take the art fair and its activities into the city. Various spaces in Madrid will hold works by artists such as Eugenio Ampudia, Guido van der Werve, Jeroen Kooijmans, Lernet & Sander, Pablo Valbuena and Ruth Gómez, interventions in the urban space, for example like Nico Munuera in Plaza de Cibeles, and concerts, including the Martin Creed Band and Planetas DJ.

The new edition of the Fair continues to support digital media, and the new free iPhone, iPad and Android apps are already available.

Online registration for professionals, ticket sales and free download of the ARCOmadrid publications are already available at our website.