Muriel
Gomez Pradas

Muriel Gómez Pradas has a PhD in Art History from the University of Zaragoza, a bachelor's degree in Geography and History, specializing in Art History, from the University of Barcelona (UB) and a postgraduate degree in Museology from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).   She is a member of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya's (UOC) Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and was previously the curator of the Asian collections at the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona. She has also been the director of the joint master's degree in Cultural Management (UOC, UdG) and coordinator of the Miró Chair (UOC-Joan Miró Foundation). She received the Japan Foundation Fellowship Researcher (1998) grant and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport's José Castillejo 2017 grant, and she was a visiting scholar at New York University (2016, 2018, 2021).  She is a member of the IdentiCat (Language, Culture and Identity in the Global Age) research group, recognized as an emerging research group (2009) and consolidated research group (2014) by the Government of Catalonia. Muriel Gómez Pradas's research activity in this group focuses on the analysis of the institutionalization of collections and museum projects in the city of Barcelona and also on breaks and continuities in Catalan artistic modernity between the pre-war and post-war periods. Two of the focal points of study are the figures of Joan Miró and the sculptor Eudald Serra, and the links between ADLAN and Club 49.  In addition, as a member of the Japan and Spain: Relations through Art interuniversity research group, which studies Japanese art collections in Spain and analyses the two country's relations and mutual artistic influences throughout history, Muriel Gómez Pradas's research activity focuses on analysing the collections of traditional Japanese art that can be found in various Catalan museums (collections and collectors from very different origins and periods) and studying how these collections reflect the artistic tastes of certain historical moments, taking popular and traditional Japanese art (the Mingei Undô) as a case study. The link between the two lines of research is the sculptor Eudald Serra, the source of the Japanese collections of the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona and a true cultural mediator in post-war Barcelona.