The César Manrique Foundation will present the book 'Museopatías' by Fernando Estévez next Tuesday, June 11, at 7:00 p.m., in the José Saramago room of La Plazuela in Arrecife. This activity is part of the centenary of the birth of César Manrique that the institution that bears his name will celebrate until April 24, 2020.
The book, which has a prologue by Anthony Alan Shelton, an international reference in critical museology, will be presented by its editors: Mayte Henríquez and Mariano de Santa Ana, who have selected a compilation of texts by Fernando Estévez on museology and heritage, two of the fields where he stood out as an anthropologist.
According to the FCM, the texts collected in the pages of 'Museopatías' have been published in magazines, exhibition catalogs and books of collective authorship or were written to be read as conferences, all of them written between 1999 and 2015. They address issues such as the mechanisms of heritage policies, the production of time and its ideological management, or the ontologies of material culture.
In the opinion of its editors, "both in his texts and in the visual approaches, Estévez raises sound and original reflections on issues that beat in the frenetic heart of our late modernity while formulating attractive questions about the role and behaviors of contemporary museums".
The anthropologist Fernando Estévez
Fernando Estévez (Tenerife, 1953-2016) was a tenured professor of Social Anthropology at the University of La Laguna, he stood out for his critical renovation of anthropology and museology in the Canary Islands. As director of the Center for Anthropological Studies of the Cabildo de Tenerife, he promoted the creation of the Museum of Anthropology of Tenerife in 1996, of which he was responsible, first as director and later as coordinator, and where he curated numerous exhibitions that dissolved the boundaries between anthropology and art to confront culture as an entangled network of relationships.
His publications include 'Indigenismo, raza y evolución' (1987), 'Bibliography of prehistory and anthropology of the Canary Islands' (edited together with Mayte Henríquez and Pedro A. Díaz, 1996), 'El pasado en el presente' (2004) and 'Memorias y olvidos del archivo' (edited together with Mariano de Santa Ana, 2010).
From the FCM they point out that "Fernando Estévez is also responsible for the innovation in the procedures for inventorying cultural heritage, from the premise that objects cannot be separated from human activity - as has been done traditionally and is still done by most experts and organizations that deal with the material manifestations of culture?".
About the editors of 'Museopatías'
For his part, Mariano de Santa Ana (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1964) holds a degree in Art History from the Complutense University of Madrid. Art critic in the Babelia supplement of the El País newspaper, he is the editor of the books 'Landscapes of pleasure, landscapes of crisis. The Canarian tourist space and its representations' (Fundación César Manrique, 2004), 'Landscape and public sphere' (with Orlando Franco Ramírez, CAAM, College of Architects of the Canary Islands, 2008), 'Memories and oversights of the archive' (with Fernando Estévez González, Editorial Lampreave, CAAM, Museum of History and Anthropology of Tenerife, 2010) and 'Pop sin brillo. Intermediate cities and visual culture' (CAAM, in press).
He has been curator, together with Fernando Estévez and Mayte Henríquez, of the exhibition 'Souvenir, souvenir' (Fundación César Manrique, Museum of History and Anthropology of Tenerife, 2007). Editor of number 369 of Revista de Occidente "Art and tourism" (February, 2012), his articles and interviews have appeared in magazines such as Exit Express, Exit Book, Fluor, Basa, Lápiz, Acto, La Página, Letras Libres, Quimera and Concreta.
As for Mayte Henríquez Sánchez (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1962) she holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of La Laguna in 1986, and a Master's degree in Museology and Cultural Management (University of La Laguna - Autonomous Organization of Museums and Centers) in 2009. Museum curator since 1987 and has taught the subject of exhibition techniques in the Master's Degree in Museology and Cultural Management of the ULL-OAMC 2013-2014.
She is currently the deputy director of the Museum of History and Anthropology of Tenerife. Among the exhibitions that she has carried out and curated are 'Blisterizaciones' (CAAM, 2007), 'Souvenir, Souvenir' or 'Archaeology of the gaze. The photographic work of Luís Diego Cuscoy' (Instituto Cabrera Pinto, 2018). She has published two novels: 'El eclipse de Selena,' Aldevara, 2011 and 'Adiós Muñoz', Ediciones Oblicuas, 2013. More recently, she has been interested in shared social memories and polyvocality, coordinating projects such as the Vicente Pérez Melián Photographic Archive (MHAT, 2014) or 'The return of the muses. Fictions and reflections from the museum', published by Editorial Mercurio in 2017.
