Giovana Jaspersen takes over as the new director of the Franz Mayer Museum

Giovana Jaspersen Garcia, a specialist in cultural management and restoration, is the new general director of the Franz Mayer Museum, in Mexico City, since January 1, 2023, as announced by the institution itself.

Giovana’s arrival will be accompanied by an exceptional program of exhibitions and design, photography, art, fashion and history activities in 2023,” the museum reported on its social media.

For her part, the new owner of the venue expressed: “The @museofranzmayer was the first place where I knew what I wanted to do, it was also the museum for which I left the place where I was born in 2009 and today it is all the reasons for stop living 100 km from paradise to continue building from its General Directorate”, he expressed from his Twitter account.

Giovana Jaspersen García was Jalisco’s Secretary of Culture between 2019 and 2021 and, in the midst of the pandemic, promoted Guadalajara’s candidacy as World Book Capital, and an ambitious cultural training program in the entity that included holding the International Society Congress for the Performing Arts (ISPA, for its acronym in English) and the edition of ‘Awakenings Impulsa 2019, headed by the Benois de la Danse Prize, Isaac Hernández.

In an interview with this newspaper in May 2019, Jaspersen established a position regarding the current role of museums: “All museums are discussing the same topic: what is the trend, what is our priority, but, above all, what is our social function, what should we be doing. That brings us all back to the agenda of the 21st century, to think about what a museum is for today, ”she said.

He urged the need to understand that museums that are closer, friendlier, more sociable and more diverse are necessary to become peacemakers. “The museum can no longer be a showcase, it can’t be this institution that was born in the 19th century, has workers from the 20th century and doesn’t know how to communicate in the 21st,” she added.

Giovana Jaspersen García has a degree in Cultural Management from the University of Guadalajara, and in Restoration of Cultural Assets from the School of Conservation and Restoration of the West (ECRO); She has also taken various restoration courses in Vienna, the Netherlands and Belgium. She is also the author of the radio column “To not die of reality ”, on Radio Formula Yucatán.

(With information from Ricardo Quiroga)