Sandra Guimarães appointed Director

Museum of Contemporary Art Helga de Alvear, one of the leading contemporary art institutions in Spain located in Cáceres, Extremadura, is pleased to announce the appointment of Sandra Guimarães as its first Director.

In her first public appearance, Sandra Guimarães shared part of her vision for the museum: “We must continue to rethink the role of the museum as a critical institution that is able to mutate while developing a community of relationships. A museum should be open to the world and without compartments, a true critical instrument that allows direct contact between the artist, the public and society,” said Guimarães. Furthermore, she has assured that the museum will only fulfill its mission if it manages to be “deeply inclusive, capable of promoting exchanges and generating encounters, as well as providing a platform for the transformative power of art”.

Sandra Guimarães’s (Porto) career in the visual arts spans around 25 years, and includes positions as Curator at Serralves Museum (Porto, Portugal), as well as founding Director of Programs & Chief Curator at Remai Modern (Saskatoon, Canada) and artistic director at Bombas Gens (Valencia, Spain).  In 2018, she was a member of the ScotiaBank nominators for the Award Photography Prize 2018, in Toronto, Canada, and she is part of the International Acquisitions Committee of La Caixa.

She has worked and developed projects recently with artists, such as, Thomas Hirschhorn, Carlos Bunga, Ryan Gander, Rosa Barba, Haegue Yang, Rikrit Tiravanija, Joan Jonas, Daniel Steegman Mangrané, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Ahlam Shibli, Matt Mullican, Cristina Iglesias, Stan Douglas, and Jimmie Durham, amongst others.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Helga de Alvear in Cáceres, Spain was created to house Spain’s most significant private collection of international contemporary art developed over 40 years by the leading gallerist and collector, Helga de Alvear.  With over 3.000 works of art by more than 500 artists spanning the five continents, Helga de Alvear Collection constitutes an extended and plural family of works of art undergoing constant expansion, including large format installations and sculptures, painting, video art and photography by renown artists such as Francisco de Goya, Olafur Eliasson, Kandinsky, Louise Bourgeois or Doris Salcedo among many others.