So that Myriam Rubio (Madrid, 53 years old) has come to have his own room to Virginia Woolf has had to pass an economic crisis, a decade and a half and a lot of patience. The museographer evokes the essay of the famous writer – “a woman must have money and a room if she wants to write novels” – when he recounts the long way that has led him to be one of the main specialists in the development projects of museums and exhibitions of the country. From a distant periphery to the usual cultural circles of power such as the port of Santa María (Cádiz), he works with his company Four Paredes for the main Spanish cultural institutions, from the Prado to the National Library, with a maxim: “dedicate to each project time and affection”.
Rubio’s last museum project has been the assembly of the temporary exhibition Búcarosin the Museum of America of Madrid, dedicated to consumption and symbolism of these ceramic objects and their relationship with water. But the fourparedes portfolio is long: from the sample Invited of the Prado Museum – which in 2020 reflected on the role of women in the history of painting – to Jeans in the Museum of the Costume – a tour of the future of the cowboy fabric in the fashion made in 2023 -, through 100 years with you of the Romanticism Museum in 2024 or the recent Nuclear. Juan Haro in the Casa del Sol In the National Museum of Sculpture of Valladolid, a dialogue between the work of the Almeria sculptor and the Greco -Roman statutee.
“We are in a good moment of exhibitions. The cultural sector goes to the couple of the economy, when there is money, there is for culture,” says Rubio, which currently organizes an average of 20 exhibitions a year. But it was not so when he made the leap to create his own business in 2010. He did it moved by “the constant anguish and pressure” of being used in a company in the sector that worked “like a factory.” “This is something creative, you need your time,” says Interior architect. The business jump, in the middle of the economic crisis, arrived when Rubio moved to El Puerto de Santa María, just when a family hostel began to manage with his then partner.
“There were very few exhibitions so I dedicated myself only to special projects. In the long run, I think that made me have a name. What makes your own room, have the needs covered and choose projects with time and affection,” says Rubio. This was how institutions such as Thyssen, the Community of Madrid or the Sorolla Museum were added to its client portfolio; Most centers located in Madrid, although the museographer does not consider to move its study in the province of Cádiz. With each of them, Rubio is in charge of conceptualizing and materializing usually temporary exhibitions and in which his name usually remains between scenes: “I like what is cooked behind and ephemeral architecture, in six months everything is destroyed.”
Each institution marks its own rhythms and work patterns, but all repeat regular guidelines. Up to fourparedes arrives a budget application in the form of Dossier that becomes a work plan “of a month or a month”, in case the museum accepts it. At that time, Rubio has to dive into the documentation of the leitmotif of the exhibition, either the origin of an advertising icon as the iconic bull of the Bodegas Osborne —suyo is the permanent exhibition route of the Toro Gallery of El Puerto— or Luis Paret’s work in the Prado. “Meanwhile, visit the room, measure the space, you have meetings with the commissioner to know what you want to tell and design based on an artistic direction. It’s like the script of a movie to develop,” explains the museographer.
On that path, there are few occasions in which there are works of art to expose that they stay out or that they even change their planned location depending on the space, once each piece is passed to drawing to be able to recreate how it will be exposed. “The commissioners always want more, so I usually recommend removing something,” explains blonde laughs. And, in between, technical and stylistic decisions that make the difference from the exhibition: “The textile is perhaps the most difficult heritage to expose, the sculpture is less grateful for the complications of the light or the supports.”
The color of the walls, that background as the protagonist as a medically discreet of a sample, has a separate chapter, as the expert reasons: “It is the key, they must be complementary to the works to be exposed. We dedicate weeks to the search for color, which works in the study, the same does not do so in the room or vice versa. In the meadow we can get to work with 20 different color samples and paint full walls to assess.” The museographer is clear that temporary samples do not escape fashions: “What works now, sooner or later may not. Today perhaps more theatricality is demanded, after the rise of immersive exhibitions, it is requested that there is more creativity in the lights or graphics.”
Rubio does not want to keep an institution, although he acknowledges that the Prado has “a level as pieces and selection to which the rest cannot reach.” He also resists choosing a specific sample, but recalls with love the challenge he supposed Tour of Spainthe itinerant exhibition organized by the Pinacoteca for its 200 anniversary: ”I met many cities and museums, it was a whole year.” After more than 15 years of experience with CuatroParedes and 35 in the sector, Myriam Rubio says that “never” has felt any impediment for being a woman in a sector with clear female predominance. Another thing is yes, as that sample reflected Invited, The woman holds the dimensions of representativeness deserved, now in the high spheres of decision and cultural power where her presence is still minority. “That’s another song …”, rivets with half a smile.