Dr. Carles Guerra, the inaugural visiting professor in Catalan Studies at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU Arts & Science (CEMS), will hold the first public lecture of his professorship on November 8 at KJCC.

Dr. Guerra’s talk will focus on the large-scale exhibit he curated for several European institutions on Francesc Tosquelles, a Catalan psychiatrist working in the early twentieth century. A new installment of this acclaimed exhibition will open at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City in 2024. Dr. Guerra has spent years researching Tosquelles, and is working to preserve his library, personal archive and filmography. A screening of his compilation of some of Tosquelles’s films will precede the lecture.

On November 14, Dr. Guerra will be the featured speaker at a roundtable discussion, “Museums and Cultural Diplomacy for the Twenty-First Century,” which will include a screening of Roberto Rossellini's last film, Beaubourg 1977. This event will be held at Casa Italiana.

The visiting professorship program in Catalan Studies is a collaborative endeavor to promote Catalan language and culture internationally. The Institut Ramon Llull partnered with NYU Arts & Science and its entities CEMS, the Museum Studies Program, KJCC and Casa Italiana to create the visiting professorship. In addition to these public lectures, Dr. Guerra will present a series of student-focused seminars at CEMS and the Museum Studies Program this academic year.

Dr. Guerra is an artist, art critic, independent researcher, and curator who has worked extensively in the field of modern and contemporary art, critical pedagogies, and documentary practices. He has worked as the director of the Primavera Fotogràfica de Catalunya, the Virreina Centre de la Imatge, and as the chief curator of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. From 2015 to 2020, Guerra was the director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies. He has taught at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and has curated a wide range of exhibits worldwide. Guerra is currently curating an exhibition on Francesc Tosquelles, an avant-garde Catalan psychiatrist, which will open at the American Folk Art Museum in Spring 2024.

CEMS is NYU’s interdisciplinary hub for teaching, research, and programming on Europe and the Mediterranean, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. While at NYU, the guest professors in Catalan Studies will participate in CEMS seminars as well as present public lectures about their scholarship, co-hosted by the Institut Ramon Llull, Casa Italiana, and KJCC at NYU Arts & Science, which has a long tradition of supporting creative and scholarly projects on Catalonia.