"It was in the 1990s when fashion started to enter museums. Until then, it had not occurred to them to collect dresses". This was stated by Javier González de Durana, director of the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum, during the VII Cultural Colloquium 'Fashion in Museums', organized by ISEM Fashion Business School.

The expert pointed out that "the entry of the big fashion corporations in these spaces meant a breach within the museum monolithism". In this line, he said that "although most of the time what is required in front of a work of art is silence and meditation, the injection of spectacle coming from the world of fashion and cinema is good for museums to get them out of a certain corseted envelopment that wanted to be understood until now as seriousness". To which he added that "the bad thing is not the spectacular, but the banal.

He also stressed that "the fashion system does not need the legitimacy of museums, but it does need new scenarios of visibility", and reviewed some of the advantages that galleries obtain with such alliances: "They reach a new public, sell more tickets, have more diffusion, gain in thematic diversification, renew their image and reinforce their perception of open institutions".  

On the other hand, he listed several cons that surround these associations: "There are accusations of commercialization of museum space, opportunism and a certain frivolity".

Intense professional trajectory

Javier González de Durana has been director of the Museo Cristóbal Balenciaga since 2011. He holds a PhD in Philosophy and Letters and has been a member of the Real Academia de las Bellas Artes de San Fernando since 1995.

He was director of the Sala de Exposiciones Rekalde between 1992 and 2001 and, from March 2001 to May 2008, director of the Fundación Artium, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo.

He is the author of numerous works on the Bilbao artistic avant-gardes of the early 20th century and a member of the Advisory Committee for the Purchase of the Art Collection for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. He has also participated as a member of the Honorary Committee of ARCO in its editions from 1997 to 2006, in addition to curating numerous exhibitions.

The cultural colloquiums of ISEM Fashion Business School, open to the general public, are designed to encourage and promote knowledge of fashion in its most varied cultural and social manifestations.