The Diputación de Alicante, from the area of Culture, has appointed the curator and doctor in History, Jorge A. Soler Díazas technical director of the Museo de Bellas Artes Gravina (MUBAG), who will take up this post from this September. The vice-president and deputy for Culture, Julia Parrahas confirmed the appointment "with which we hope to give an important boost to this centre of reference with the help of a professional with a great museum career who has proven his worth at the head of major exhibitions and cultural initiatives.".
Soler, born in Alicante in 1960, holds a doctorate in history, specialising in recent prehistory, museology and museography. Since 1991 he has been curator of Prehistory at the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Alicante (MARQ). In 2003 he became head of the Exhibitions and Dissemination Unit of the MARQ and in 2018 he was appointed director of Exhibitions of the Fundación Comunidad Valenciana MARQ. He has coordinated from these positions of responsibility more than a hundred temporary exhibitionslocal, national and international.
He has also directed the Department of Culture and Research of the Instituto Alicantino de Cultura Juan Gil Albert (2004-2007), the magazine Canelobre (1999-2004) and the magazine 'MARQ. Archaeology and Museums' (2004-2018). Since 2015 he is associate professor attached to the Department of Prehistory of the Department of Prehistory, Archaeology, Ancient History, Greek and Latin Philology at the University of Alicante.
In connection with the new post, it was co-designer of the project 'Palacio Gravina. Museum. An idea with a content in a space (1997)'. This proposal formed part of the report 'Galería Gravina. Museo Provincial' by the architects Rafael Pérez, Elena Albajar and Joaquín Maseres for the adaptation of the buildings in Gravina Street that today constitute the MUBAG. Soler has also been in charge of the assembly of MARQ's Modern and Contemporary room (2002), an area of 220 m2 that provides an overview of Alicante society from the 16th to the 20th century, and of the ethnographic montage of the Castell de Castells Museum.
In an international context, the curator has collaborated in the presentation of the catalogues of the exhibitions 'Iran, cradle of civilisations' with the National Museum of Iran in 2019; 'Mayas, the enigma of civilisations' in 2017, with the National Museum of Guatemala; 'Vikings, warriors of the north, giants of the sea', with the National Museum of Denmark; 'Lords of heaven and earth. China in the Han Dynasty'; 'Hermitage: Treasures of Russian archaeology at MARQ', in 2011 with the Hermitage Museum; or 'Scythians: Treasures of Tuva', in 2008, with the Institute of Material Culture of St. Petersburg. He has participated in European projects linked to MARQ.such as the meetings held since 2009 by the European Exhibition Network.
Soler develops his research facet as director of around 40 archaeological excavation campaigns. documented with a hundred of research articles and the coordination of monographs. The two lines of action, museographic and research, converge in the exhibitions in which he has curated and coordinated the corresponding catalogues.
