Sala 411: The American Way of Life 

On the occasion of the reorganization of the Reina Sofía National Museum and Art Center, its then director, Manuel Borja-Villel, pointed out “the need not so much to visit institutions, as to inhabit them.” The ambitious presentation came after a convulsive start-of-the-century that in a short span of time had seen numerous transformative events unfold from the spaces we inhabit: the financial crisis of 2008 and the consequent questioning of the neoliberal system from squares all over the world, the increasingly palpable evidence of climate crisis in the landscapes that surround us, or the revived protagonism of domestic environments as a result of Covid-19. In his remarks, Borja-Villel borrowed the distinction between visiting and inhabiting put forward by the Italian curator and activist Marco Baravalle, for whom the time difference between a fleeting and a prolonged visit determines the links that cultural institutions forge with their most immediate contexts. For Borja-Villel, inhabiting the museum thus means transforming its representation spaces into laboratories from which to test radical imaginations, understand other cosmovisions, and promote alternative social models. In sum, inhabiting the museum means establishing longer-lasting relationships with the contexts into which the institution is inserted, contributing to the creation of forms of cohabitation that benefit all agents involved...[+]