NYU will introduce a new professorship that will help increase the visibility and prestige of Catalan Studies and research on Catalan language and culture abroad. The director of the Institut Ramon Llull, Pere Almeda, and the Dean of Arts and Science at NYU, Antonio Merlo, have signed a collaboration agreement for the mutual diffusion of Catalan Studies and academic research at the university through a guest lecturer who will teach at the NYU Arts and Science Center for European and Mediterranean Studies on a yearly basis.
The objective of this professorship is to contribute to the global cultural issues that are currently being debated at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies from a Catalan perspective: art, immigration, race and other social questions pertaining to European identities.
The relationship between the Institut Ramon Llull and NYU goes back many years. This new initiative helps to consolidate and diversify the implementation of Catalan Studies in prestigious academic institutions throughout New York City. The Institut Ramon Llull is also responsible for the Mercè Rodoreda Chair at the Graduate Center-City University of New York, which is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year. These professorships are complemented by the teaching of Catalan language and culture at Columbia University.
The first visiting professor at NYU (Fall 2023) will be Carles Guerra (Amposta, 1965), the curator of the exposition taking place at the New York American Folk Art Museum in 2024, which will introduce visitors to Francesc Tosquelles, an avant-garde Catalan psychiatrist. Guerra has also been director of the festival Primavera Fotogràfica de Catalunya, the Virreina Centre de la Imatge and head curator of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). From 2015 to 2020 he was director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies. His research focuses on dialogue as a practise in the areas of art and visual culture. Many of his publications have concentrated on critical pedagogy, documentary practices and the conditions for the development of post-Fordist cultural production. He has been an associated professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and professor at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College and has also curated a wide range of expositions with artists such as Perejaume, Joaquim Jordà, Xavier Ribas, Ahlam Shibli, Art & Language, Allan Sekula, Susan Meiselas, Harun Farocki, Oriol Vilanova and Ariella Aisha Azoulay.
The Institut Ramon Llull supports the implementation of professorships and study centres in renowned international universities, some with long, solid histories of teaching Catalan Studies. The visiting professorship at NYU is just one of many visiting professorships that contribute to the international diffusion of research in the humanities and social sciences and help with the mobility of lecturers, both in Catalan universities and in other universities that form part of the IRL network.
