Instead of certainties, rooms.
Instead of closed display cases, open stories.
The exhibition “Hotel of the Looted Artifact” by artist Agnès Essonti Luque (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, 29 years old) proposes to view the museum not as a final destination for objects, but as a temporary space, a place of passage where the objects and the memories they contain wait to be heard.
The exhibition, on view at the National Museum of Anthropology (MNA) in Madrid as part of the museum’s 150th anniversary program, transforms the rooms into an intermediate, almost domestic space, more a temporary residence than a permanent repository.
Until 24 May 2026.
The idea of a hotel serves as a central metaphor here. A hotel is neither a home nor a non-place: it’s a transit station. You arrive, stay for a while, and then leave again.
Essonti applies this logic to artifacts removed from their original context: ritual, spiritual, or everyday objects, many of which originate from African regions, to question the idea that the museum is the natural or permanent destination of things.
