• The ties with Spain of the patron Ella Fontanals-Cisneros
  • A Spanish among the 200 most active collectors in the world

Art collector Ella Fontanals-Cisneros gives up negotiations with the Government to create a museum in Madrid in the Tabacalera complex that houses its collection of Latin American art, and opens up to explore initiatives with another institution or private companies.

"My time to work with the Government is over, I am physically and mentally exhausted ," said the patron of Cuban origin and Spanish nationality at a meeting held Thursday in Madrid with the media to communicate the end of the negotiations.

The Fontanals-Cisneros collection is one of the most valuable in the world , for its large section of Latin American art. It is formed by some 2,500 works between pieces of geometric abstraction, photography and video art.

It includes Latin American names like Gego, Jesús Rafael Soto, Alejandro Otero, Lygia Clark, Mira Schendel ; and international artists such as Barbara Kruger, Olafur Eliasson; Donald Judd and Ai Wei Wei .

The donation talks date back 9 years with the Zapatero Executive , but the first agreement was signed two years ago with the Ministry of Culture to donate 400 works and lend another 600 (mainly Cuban art).

The agreement was to place them in a museum that would be created in Tabacalera, which had to be reformed for that purpose, and that would share space with Reina Sofía.

The collector, of Cuban origin and with a Spanish passport, believes that the place of the collection is Spain because of the ties that bind him to Latin America, but once the negotiations with the Government are broken he has shown himself open to explore agreements with other institutions or companies private.

Fontanals Cisneros points to a key event so that the negotiations have been broken: a letter last October from Minister José Guirao in which he said he could not assume the terms of the pre-agreement signed with the previous minister - Íñigo Fernández de Vigo - for " Legal issues".

The collector called the Ministry three days ago to request an appointment with the new minister but has not had an answer, she has lamented.

The first contacts to bring the collection to Spain date back nine years ago, with the Executive of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. There were also contacts with the teams of Ana Botella and Manuela Carmena , in which, although there was a will, there were no good results either.

It should be foundation

One of the questions that Guirao adduced in that letter was that the center could not receive the name of a museum , nor accept that its board of directors was formed by personalities from the world of art - in addition to the Government - because for that it should have the character of Foundation.

"That is not impassable walls - he stressed - if the country were really interested it could have been solved," said the collector, who has been surprised by the position of the previous minister, who was director of the Reina Sofía Museum, who He still asked him to donate the collection.

"They told me that if I wanted to donate it, I would give it to them, and I would turn around and they would do what they wanted. I want to give it to the public but in a consistent way, I don't want every new government to change course , I want it to be something stable," has pointed out.

What if the Ministry called you now to reopen the process? "They would have to come with a check in hand and a short-term project ," said the collector, who closed that route.

One of the main pitfalls of the project has been the rehabilitation of the Tabacalera building, which is around 15 million euros , and which should have started in 2018 but has been delayed due to lack of budgets.

After this long and "disappointing" experience, Fontanals-Cisneros is now open to investigate alliances in the private sector and in other cities . Although he did not want to give details, he does acknowledge that he has received offers from cities such as Miami (where he already had two museums, one of them closed it to concentrate his efforts on that of Madrid) and in Seville.

"If I do not succeed, I will simply look at them (the works) in my house and remember what I have tried to do and that I have not been able to do."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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