PAC's Scientific Committee is composed of authoritative representatives from the world of contemporary art: Ferran Barenblit, Associate Professor for the Department of Art History at the University of Michigan; Silvia Bignami, Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Milan; Iolanda Ratti, curator of the Museo del Novecento in Milan; Diego Sileo, curator of the PAC.
The choice of three external members favoured certain precise fields of interest and investigation: the international vision and broad political and cultural scope of an important foreign museum; the research, didactic training and art criticism - including the more militant and experimental - guaranteed by the university; the consolidation and development of collaborations with the city's museums.
FERRAN BARENBLIT is Associate Professor for the Department of Art History at the University of Michigan, is an internationally recognised museum director with extensive managerial and curatorial experience, and has directed three museums continuously over the past twenty years (MACBA and Centro de arte Santa Monica in Barcelona, CA2M in Madrid). An expert in contemporary art with a profound understanding of its political and social extensions, he has worked with some of the world's most important artists. Since its opening in 2008, he has directed the CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo de la Comunidad de Madrid located in Móstoles, in the metropolitan area of Madrid. From 2002 to 2008, Barenblit took over the direction of the Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, a space that the Generalitat de Catalunya dedicated to contemporary art. During that time, the Centre d'Art Santa Mònica presented numerous projects by national and international artists, such as Martí Anson, Alicia Framis, Christian Jankowski, Dora García, Jiri Kovanda, Maria Nordman, Esther Partegàs and Fernando Sánchez Castillo. From 1996 to 1998 and from 2000 to 2001 Barenblit was the chief curator of Espai 13, at the Fundació Joan Miró, where he organised some fifteen exhibitions. In 2001, he curated the exhibition Irony, hosted in the museum's temporary exhibition galleries and focused on the radical changes that have taken place in art since 1960.From 1994 to 1996 he was assistant curator at the New Museum in New York, where he worked with director Marcia Tucker. He is a member of: ACCA, Associació Catalana de Crítics d'Art (Commission 2000-2002); IKT, International Association of Contemporary Art Curators (Commission: 2011-2014); ADACE, Asociación de Directores de Arte Contemporáneo de España (Commission since 2007); CIMAM, International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art.
SILVIA BIGNAMI is a professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Milan. Since 2003 she has been a member of the scientific committee of the journal L'uomo nero. Her study and research topics are mainly divided into the following strands: the market and art collecting in Milan in the 20th and 21st centuries; the artistic debate in the magazines of the 1930s; public art in the contemporary age; the work and critical fortune of Lucio Fontana. His most recent publications include: Italian antimonuments between parody and participation, in Une absence presente: figure de l'image mémorielle, Paris, Mimesis France, 2013; Estratégias monumentais nos anos 1930, in Modernidad latina. Os Italianos e os Centros do Modernismo Latino-Americano, Sao Paulo, Mac Usp, 2014; Lucio Fontana e l'artventure parigina, Milan, Scalpendi, 2014. He has curated several exhibitions, including: Outside. Art and Urban Space. 1968-1976 (Milan, Museo del Novecento, 2011); Anni '30. Arti in Italia oltre il fascismo (Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 2012); Yves Klein Lucio Fontana, Milano Parigi 1957-1962 (Milan, Museo del Novecento, 2014).
IOLANDA RATTI graduated in Art History in 2003 from the University of Milan, the year in which she began collaborating with the City of Milan and in particular with the Museo del Novecento, of which she followed all the phases until its opening in 2010. In 2008, he obtained his specialisation diploma at the University of Milan with a thesis on the presentation and conservation of video installations, also the result of his participation in the D.I.C. project, Documentation of Complex Installations. Her research focuses mainly on contemporary art techniques and the practical and theoretical issues related to its conservation, with particular reference to installations and immaterial practices. She has attended courses in New Media management and conservation, in particular SOIMA (Safeguarding Sound and Image Collections) 2009 at ICCROM, with which she collaborates. From 2011 to 2013 she worked in the Time Based Media Conservation Department at the Tate Gallery, London. From 2013 to 2016 she was conservation consultant at Pirelli HangarBicocca. Since 2014 she has been conservator at the Museo del Novecento, Milan.
DIEGO SILEO, art theoretician and historian, he is Chief Curator at PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (Pavilion of Contemporary Art) in Milan, focusing his interests on experiences and theories relating to performance and poetics of the body. He conceived and curated, among others, the exhibitions of Marina Abramović, Regina José Galindo, Santiago Sierra, Teresa Margolles, Anna Maria Maiolino, Tania Bruguera,Artur Zmijewski, Adrian Piper, Shirin Neshat and the forthcoming Marco Fusinato show. He was awarded a degree in Contemporary Art at the University of Milan and a PhD in Latin American Art at the University of Udine. As scholar of the processes of aesthetic creation in South America, he attended specialized courses at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) in Mexico City and at UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires) in Buenos Aires. In 2010 he contributed, as the only European member, to the research project for the new archive of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera at Casa Azul Museum in Mexico City. He has participated in many Italian and international meetings and lectures as a speaker on contemporary art themes and collaborated on exhibition projects at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Malba, Buenos Aires; University Art Gallery, Irvine, and BPS22, Charleroi. He is the author of the first
Italian monograph on Remedios Varo (2007), Abel Azcona (2015), and Carlos Martiel (2016), as well as of essays for specialized publications and exhibition catalogues. In 2018 he curated also the big retrospective of Frida Kahlo at MUDEC – Museo delle Culture (Museum of Cultures) in Milan.
