A note to the English readers: this week’s post is about a rather local issue, the legal status of the Museu Picasso de Barcelona. I am not sure it is of the utmost interest for the readers from abroad, so I am not translating it in full. Anyway, the basic facts are the following.
Until recently, the Museu Picasso was not an incorporated body, but just another department of Barcelona’s City Council. That meant, among other things, the Museum had to funnel all the revenue it generated to the City Council, and that their employees were not hired by the Museum itself, but by the City Council. Now the Council has finally decided to change that, and it has established a public Foundation to run the Museum, in partnership with a group of private sponsors.
I think this was the right thing to do. But I would also like to point out that, according to section 10 of the Articles of the Foundation, all the members of the new Foundation’s Board will be appointed by the City Council – without any provision regarding from where the Council will pick up the new appointees, nor about their respective qualities, qualifications or terms of service. I argue that this is a door that is open to unrestrained control of the Foundation by the ruling political party controlling of the City Council – one of the old mistakes that the new Foundation was supposed to avoid. The text in Catalan develops this point, and some others of lesser importance.
