The Irish Museum of Modern Art follows in the footsteps of London's Tate Modern when it announces the appointment of a new director today. Like the Tate's Mr Vicente Todoli, IMMA's new director, Mr Enrique Juncosa, is Spanish.
Currently deputy director of the Reina Sofia Museum of Modern Art in Madrid, Mr Juncosa will take up his new position in February 2003. Since the resignation of Mr Declan McGonagle as director in April 2001, Ms Philomena Byrne has been acting director at IMMA.
Mr Juncosa was born in Palma de Mallorca in 1961. The great-nephew of the Spanish painter Joan Miro, he first studied electronic music, then attained a degree in English at the University of Barcelona. He was art critic of the daily newspaper El Pais for six years, and became deputy director of Valencia's Institute of Modern Art in 1998, before moving to the Reina Sofia in 2000.
Among the exhibitions he curated are shows by major international artists including Miquel Barcelo, Malcolm Morley, Willem de Kooning, Michael Craig-Martin, Panamarenko, Eva Lootz and the sculptor Barry Flanagan. One of Mr Flanagan's monumental sculptural hare's guards the entrance to IMMA, and the artist has illustrated a forthcoming book of poetry by Mr Juncosa - his sixth volume of verse.
While IMMA will be his first directorship, his appointment is likely to be seen as a good one for the museum. After the departure of Mr McGonagle, the general view was that IMMA needed a young, dynamic director with international experience, and Mr Juncosa meets all of those criteria.
