The Tentacular Museum

The Tentacular Museum is rooted in the concept of Museo en Red (The Networked Museum), which encapsulated the institutional experiments the Museo Reina Sofía initiated in 2008. From 2023 onwards, at the dawn of a new institutional phase, these same experiments now operate under the Tentacular Museum. According to theorist Donna Haraway, tentacular refers to a de-regulated and multiplying “making-with” based on the practice of “with-touch”, a practice of touching and feeling realities, initiatives, ideas and urgencies to establish meaningful connections. As a result, the Tentacular Museum transcends the logic of geographic proximity to consider a situated social, political and affective institutionality in the present context, while acknowledging that it is part of a broader cultural fabric. 

By way of different activities, work groups and publications, the Tentacular Museum assays co-responsible modalities of programming, sharing and listening which weave a free-flowing ecosystem of alliances and exchanges around, inside and outside the Museo. A framework which flows beyond the sphere of art. Thus, connections are made with adjacent spheres, such as social movements and cultural policies, while institutional space and the notion of the public become porous to the different realities with which they come into contact. The Museo is consequently upheld as a place of encounter, as well as a space of friction and debate, where the different realities and socio-historical process traversing it — be it the neighbourhood, the city, the State or the world — question and transform its modes of action.