Antoni Muntadas

Antoni Muntadas was born in Barcelona in 1942 and has lived in New York since 1971. Through his works he addresses social, political and communications issues such as the relationship between public and private space within social frameworks, and investigates channels of information and the ways they may be used to censor or promulgate ideas. His projects are presented in different media such as photography, video, publications, the Internet, installations, and urban interventions.

Muntadas has taught and directed seminars at diverse institutions throughout Europe and the United States, including the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, the Fine Arts Schools of Bordeaux and Grenoble, the University of California in San Diego, the San Francisco Art Institute, Cooper Union, the University of São Paulo, and the University of Buenos Aires. He has also served as a resident artist and consulting advisor for various research and education centres including the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, the Banff Centre in Alberta, Arteleku in San Sebastian, The National Studio for Contemporary Arts Le Fresnoy, and the University of Western Sydney. He is currently Professor of the Practice at ACT in the Department of Architecture at MIT and at the Instituto Universitario de Arquitectura del Veneto in Venice.

Muntadas has received several prizes and grants from sources including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Arts Electronica in Linz, Laser d’Or in Locarno, the Premi Nacional d’Arts Plàstiques awarded by the Catalan Government, the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas 2005, and the Premio Velázquez de las Artes Plásticas 2009 granted by the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

His work has been exhibited in numerous museums, including MoMa, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Musée Contemporain de Montreal, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, and the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. His work has been included in international events and venues such the VI and X editions of Documenta Kassel (1977, 1997), the Whitney Biennial of American Art (1991), the 51st Venice Biennial (2005), and others in São Paulo, Lyon, Taipei, Gwangju, and Havana. At the Venice Biennial in 2005 Muntadas exhibited On Translation: I Giardini in the Spanish Pavilion. Other solo exhibitions include Protokolle at the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Proyectos Urbanos (2002/2005), Hacia Sevilla 2008 at the Centro de las Artes de Sevilla and Muntadas. Histoires du couteau, Le Creux de l’enfer at the Centre d’art contemporain, Thiers. In 2006 he presented the installation On Translation: SocialNetworks at the Inter-Society of Electronic Arts in San José, California and in 2007 Muntadas/BS. AS. was exhibited simultaneously at the Telefónica Foundation Space, the Recoleta Cultural Center and the Spanish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires. In 2008 he presented Petit et Grand at the Cervantes Institute in Paris and Muntadas: The Construction of Fear and the Loss of Public Space at the José Guerrero Cultural Centre in Granada. During 2009 he made an intervention at the Mies van der Rohe Pavillion with the Project Muntadas. On Translation: Paper BP/MVDR. In Montréal he showed La construction de la Peur at the Contemporary Art Gallery SBC and Muntadas: Vidéo, média critique, a retrospective presented at the Cinemathéque Quebécoise. Supported by the program Lives And Works in Istanbul, in 2010 he exhibited On Translation: Açik Radyo, Myths and Stereotypes at the Istanbul Modern Museum. More recently, the retrospective Muntadas: Entre/Between was shown at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid in 2011–12. In 2013, Muntadas exhibited Informação-Espaço-Controle in Estaçao Pinacoteca in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Protocolii Veneziani I at Galeria Michella Rizzo in Venice; and Muntadas at Galería Moisés Pérez de Albéniz, Madrid. The exhibit About Academia, previously installed in 2011 at The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, traveled to the Audain Gallery in Vancouver in early 2013. An academic essay with Monos Editions, “For  A Project Methodology” (September 2013) is among his recent publications.