The Juan Antonio Ramírez Chair

The Juan Antonio Ramírez Chair, which encompasses the major lectures organised annually by the Museo Reina Sofía since 2010, seeks to engender a permanent place of reflection around art history understood as a discourse with specific characteristics and with a growing importance in today’s society at a time of image overload.

The Chair’s name pays homage to Spanish art historian Juan Antonio Ramírez (1948–2009), founder of the MA in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture, which is organised jointly between the Autonomous University of Madrid, the Complutense University of Madrid and the Museo. Its defence of art history in its freest and most inventive and original manifestation sketches this space of collective questioning, a space which annually calls upon a figure of international renown to give a master lecture and conducts an intensive seminar to get the academic year under way in the Study Centre. 

Organised in collaboration with the aforementioned MA, the Chair ultimately explores the different approaches and methodological tensions which have traversed art historiography in recent years, spotlighting its cross-overs with other knowledges and practices, in addition to the conditions and characteristics that define the present moment.