The viewer is the one who completes the work of art.

The exhibition Dear viewer, what are you looking at? focuses on the figure of the spectator, whose gaze completes the work of art. He argues that every artist conceives a model of spectator when he creates, so this exhibition looks at the one who looks and proposes a typology of ways of looking: detective, hedgehog, peephole and projector. This morning the proposal was presented to the media, which the public will be able to get to know at 7 p.m. in a masterclass with its curators and the subsequent opening of the rooms. Throughout 2025 the entrance to the MUN is free, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary and thanks to the partnership the City Council of Pamplona.

Dear Viewer is the exhibition project selected among the Master's Degree final projects (TFM) of the 7th promotion of the Master's Degree in curatorial programs of study the MUN to be carried out in its galleries. Florencia Baliña, Andrés Ruiz, Aroa Urteaga and Andrea Vargas are the curators, directed by professors Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro (since 2024 also artistic director of the MUN) and María Aguilera. 

It is the result of an agreement with the ARCO Foundationwhich has entrusted the MUN with the study and research of its Collection - housed and managed by the CA2M (Museo Centro de Arte dos de Mayo) in Madrid - and thanks to the financial aid of the Pablo Palazuelo Foundation. "This project reflects the spirit of the ARCO Foundation: to generate opportunities for new voices to contribute their vision to contemporary art. By putting the Collection in their hands, we reaffirm our commitment to those who are beginning to write the future of curating," said ARCO director Maribel Lopez.

The director of the MUN, Jaime García del Barrio, agreed with her, adding that Dear Viewer "has the value of joining our efforts with relevant art institutions in the art world".  

It represents a new way of looking at 35 works belonging to the ARCO Foundation Collection, which was born in 1987 and since then brings together productions by renowned artists of the national and international scene. It presents works by Eva Fábregas, Teresa Solar Abboud, June Crespo, Jimmie Durham or Jorge Macchi, among others.

As the curators have explained, they do it by asking themselves what the pieces propose to the people who come across them. What subject of attitudes (emotional, corporal, intellectual) do they intend to awaken, what do they try to "make us do". 

Based on this question, the sample proposes an imaginary classification of four types of spectators: the detective (who seeks to solve a mystery), the hedgehog (who prioritizes the sensorial dimension), the voyeur (a sort of voyeur) and the projector (who, upon encountering the work, projects his own fantasies onto it). Thus, they suggest an "original and fun" approach to the Collection, aimed at all audiences.

For her part, the director of the Master's Degree in curatorial programs of study at the University of Navarra, Nieves Acedo, wanted to highlight the figure of Tania Pardo, director of CA2M, "one of the most active people in this country in promote the training of new curators, professor and collaborator with the Master's Degree since its conceptualization". 

Acedo also highlighted the coincidence between the topic addressed by this sample and the focus of the research project of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) "Models for Art Spectatorship (MOAS), which he also leads. "The question about the spectator in museums is a general concern that can take many forms and that in Dear Spectator is approached from an exciting point of view: the ideal spectator desired by the artist, the one for whom he actually projects his work," he concluded.