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Madrid’s Prado museum gets first new boss in 15 years

Spain's Prado art museum, home to masterpieces by Francisco Goya and Diego Velazquez, on Wednesday appointed Italian Renaissance specialist Miguel Falomir as its director as the world-renowned gallery nears its bicentenary.

Published: 16 March 2017 10:02 CET

Madrid's Prado museum gets first new boss in 15 years

File image taken on February 1st 2012 shows Miguel Falomir talking to the press next to an authenticated contemporary copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa presented after it was found in the Prado's

Falomir, the museum's deputy director and long-serving curator, will replace outgoing director Miguel Zugaza who is stepping down after 15 years at the helm of the Madrid museum.

Last month, the Prado's selection committee unanimously chose the 51-year-old former art history professor to be its new director and the museum's trustees approved the decision on Wednesday, a statement from the Prado said.

Falomir joined the museum 20 years ago as head of its department of Italian and French paintings and since 2015, he has served as the Prado's deputy director of conservation and research.

He has been responsible for organising major exhibitions at the museum on Titian, Tintoretto, Jacopo Bassano, and Raphael.

Zugaza announced in November that he would leave his post to return to his previous job as the head of Bilbao's Fine Arts Museum, which he held between 1995 and 2001.

He took charge of the Prado in 2002, vowing to double the number of visitors, with the figures jumped from 1.7 million in his first year to more than three million in 2016.

Zugaza oversaw a transformation of the Prado, opening in 2007 a modernist new annex which offers visitors plenty of natural light and blends in with the original gallery which was built in the early 19th century.

The extension and renovation of the museum — the biggest in its history — allowed it to show some 400 additional paintings alongside the 1,000 that were already on display in the permanent collection.

The Prado will mark its bicentenary in 2019.

African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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