Panel discussion

CIMAM 2005 Annual Conference
“Museums: Intersections in a Global Scene”

CIMAM 2005’s last panel session was carried out by Gabriel Perez Barreiro, curator of Latin-American art at the Blanton Museum of Art of the University of Texas in Austin; Ariel Jimenez, curator of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection in Caracas, Venezuela; Virginia Pérez-Rattón, artist, curator and founder-director of TEOR/éTica – an artistic, academic and political project which takes place in several locations in Central America and the Caribbean; and Ana Longoni, professor of Art History at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The panel was mediated by Moacir dos Anjos, director of the Museum of Modern Art (MAMAM) in Pernambuco, Brasil. 

The four lecturers took as departure point Walter Mignolo’s argument presented in his conference “Museums in the Colonial Horizon of Modernity”. They talked about the specificities of issues involving art, curatorships and museums in Latin-America, emphasizing the diversity and complexity of the Latin-American context.

Gabriel Perez Barreiro was the first one to speak. He brought into discussion the issue of Latin-American art in the US, as well as proposing a cultural-geographical approach to the question.  He is the curator of Latin American art at the Blanton Museum of Art of the University of Texas in Austin - the largest university museum in the US, which has the largest Latin American library – Bensons Library – and one of the country’s most important study programmes on Latin America (LLILAS). He reminded participants of the questions proposed by Mignolo regarding the relationship between modernity and colonialism. By paraphrasing the renowned British cultural critic Raymond Williams’ sentence “when was modernity?”, Barreiro introduced the question of “where was modernity?” in an attempt to reflect on the geography of modern and contemporary art  and how museums can respond to it.   The works by Afro-American artist Fred Wilson – analysed by Mignolo – have prompted him to think of Latin American culture in relation to the need to deconstruct colonial power relations; however, according to this perspective, Barreiro also considered important the reflection on the relationship between culture and geographic and ethnic origins.

According to Barreiro, before discussing any context it is vital to define which context is going to be discussed. His point of view as a curator of Latin American art in a university museum in Texas – a rich city, which is economically central but peripheral in terms of culture and tourism, is certainly different from the point of view of someone based in New York, Paris, Caracas or Sao Paulo.  As opposed to other museums’ initiatives, which need to legitimise the presence of Latin American art in their collections, the Blanton Museum of Art holds a Latin American art collection since its foundation in 1964. The museum is part of the first study programme in Latin American art at an American university, as well as being the first museum to have a permanent curator of Latin American art, since 1989. This collection currently holds more than two thousand works and is one of the largest in the country, not to mention that it is the most renowned. Therefore, according to the Blanton Museum’s point of view, Latin American art is not something to be discovered or re-discovered. To the contrary, it has a strong and ongoing presence in the American art scene.

However, in the US, there is what Barreiro calls “the Columbus syndrome”, which is the supposed rediscovery of Latin America by each generation. As an example, Barreiro showed two important American art magazines – Art News and Art in America – both from June 2003. They brought news from the rediscovery of Latin America by the American public and institutions. The magazine contained all the broadly recognised stereotypes and even the professionals who should be suspicious about these stereotypes could not escape from them. Barreiro mentioned the title of a recent article by Holland Cotter published in the New York Times. The critic regarded the inclusion of works from Latin-American artists in MoMA’s permanent collection as the arrival of non-western art. This point of view led Barreiro to the following question:  does the New York Times critic regard as non-western art works of artists such as Torres Garcia – one of the great artists dealing with constructive art who established close relations with Dutchman Piet Mondrian in Paris, one of the greatest representatives of the so-called “western” art? 

Overall, the inclusion of Latin American art in the American institutional context follows two contrasting paths. The first one emphasizes the differences and unique identity of Latin American art, which is a political approach stemming from the 1960s civil rights movements.  This perspective – defending the desire to be visible and auto-representative – led to the establishment of cultural organisations dedicated to register and interpret the Latin American experience in the US, for example the Museu Del Barrio and the Galeria de La Raza. In the 1980s the politics of minorities became the prevailing discourse and Latin-American or “Latino” art  - i.e. art from Latin American people living in the USA – become art by the “other”.

According to Barreiro, this perspective led to a false idea with regards to the existence of a unique “Latino” culture, as if all Latin American people shared the same origins. Some Latin American artists started to question their position as minorities according to the American political approach to the issue, even though in their respective countries they did not feel as such. On the other hand, American artists with Latin American roots expressed their dissatisfaction towards the institutions that placed them and Latin American artists under the same category, even though they did not share the same experiences.  A classic example analysed by Barreiro is the prevalence of concepts such as “frontier”, “cultural hybridisation” or “bilingualism” in the discussions about Latin American art in the US, spreading the idea that every Latin American person lives “between frontiers”. 

The second path is exactly the opposite and it is exemplified by Gabriel Orozco (Mexico, 1962) and Felix González Torres (Cuba, 1957-1996). These artists denied the category of “Latino “ art and emphasized the universal nature of their production.

Barreiro mentioned that the arts market, including fairs and biennales, responded almost immediately to this claim and today we can find artists from all over the world at international biennales. This dissemination does not always bring quality or knowledge; therefore, Barreiro emphasized the importance of examining the different contexts of the artistic production without turning these differences into intransigent or controlling elements. 

In the case of the Blanton Museum, the opening of its new headquarters on April 2 introduced the issue of how to present their collections at the same time as avoiding both traps to American and Latin American art curators. These art curators thought that the separation between Latin American and American art - as an organisational principle - was an untenable procedure; and, therefore opted for re-arranging the collection  in a way that dissolved this dichotomy without dismissing the context in which the works were created.

Gabriel Perez Barreiro’s proposal for the Blanton Museum was to re-organise its classification system, including information about when and where artists lived in the catalogue. According to Barreiro, this practical step allowed the re-definition of the discussion terms with regards to the so-called Latin American art and a more comprehensive understanding about each artist’s specific context with the aim of a better understanding of their works and trajectories in terms of cultural geography.

Ariel Jimenez, the second lecturer, presented his work as the curator of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection in Caracas, Venezuela. In order to discuss specific curatorial strategies for a given collection and its insertion in different contexts, he talked about three experiences, two in the US and one in Brazil. 

The Cisneros collection is one of the most important private collections of Latin American art, particularly modern and contemporary art. It has a significant collection of Brazilian concrete and neo-concrete art, a considerable amount of Latin American contemporary art, as well as modern and contemporary art works produced outside Latin America, which is used as reference. There is also a collection named “American Landscape”, which includes works from European artists who visited the American continent from the seventeenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. The collection has also an ethnographic and a colonial art department. 

Even though the collection does not have its own exhibition centre, works have been exhibited in museum across Europe and the American continent. The collection is the result of a collector’s own personal desires and criteria. Her aim was to establish a strategy to legitimise Latin American art in the US, that is, to provide a different point of view about Latin America, free from the stigmas of an exotic territory and emphasizing the continent’s need of self-understanding. The collection was an attempt to avoid post-colonial behaviour and prejudice amongst Latin American peoples. 

Jimenez stated that his main goal as a curator was to establish new power relations between the collection and exhibition spaces, turning host museums – regarded not only as the exhibition spaces but also as institutions of power - as debate centres, contributing to the collector’s strategy to introduce a different view of Latin America and playing with the expectations of each exhibition or institution’s curator. 

The collection was exhibited for the first time at the Blanton Museum. The works selected for this exhibition were those from Venezuela and which dealt with geometric and kinetic abstraction. The participation of the collection’s curators was minimal.

The second experience mentioned by Jimenez was an exhibition at the Fogg Museum of the University of Harvard in 2001.  James Cuno – museum director at Harvard and the exhibition’s curator – selected some unique and representative works according to his criteria without taking into account the artists’ trajectory and the works’ position in relation to the artists’ production. This led the collection’s curators, including Ariel Jimenez, to reflect upon the meaning of these particular works extracted from their context and specific processes. Harvard’s approach was to treat the art works as independent objects, contradicting the collection’s own goals; as well as not considering the understanding of the artists’ development, their heritage and the several links between the artists’ origins and points of view.

The third experience was the exhibition which took place at the Museum of Modern Art – MAM in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Given that a foreign curator was responsible for exhibiting a collection of Brazilian art in Brazil, this was a challenging exhibition. Most of the Brazilian art works in the Cisneros collection were gathered with the advice of Paul Herkenhoff. Exhibiting this private collection in Brazil according to Jimenez and the Brazilian curator’s points of view required, most of all, reflecting on an insertion strategy and various considerations. Herkenhoff’s work led Patty Cisneros to think historically about the collection, as her work strategy included selections which attempted to show the historic context; therefore, this aspect had be more explicit. It was also necessary to emphasize that this collection presented a Venezuelan look into Brazilian art.

According to Jimenez, the exhibition reflected the strategy to insert art works in the Brazilian, or even Sao Paulo, context, taking into account that art works are perceived differently depending on the context. When commenting on the exhibition design, Jimenez declared that he used the exterior of Ibirapuera Park – where the museum is located – as his guide to designing the exhibition, in an attempt to create an inside/outside metaphor representing the way the collection was thought to be placed in the museum.

The exhibition’s central axis reflected the strength of the Neo-Concrete art, the perpendicular and diagonal axis presented a historical approach or even archaeological, as it started with contemporary art ending with 1940s and 1950s art. The works from European artists were placed in a parallel line, not visible from the exhibition entrance. Artists such as Mondrian were not seen as departure points – which would lead to misinterpretations - but rather as counterpoints. Furthermore, the presence of artists from other parts of Latin America – Peru, Chile, Colombia, amongst others – questioned the common idea, according to Jimenez, of not considering our neighbours’ production due to the fact that we still keep the colonial prejudice of comparing ourselves to Europe and untying ourselves from our equals.

Consequently, Jimenez believes that the role of Latin American art collections – such as Cisneros’ – must be to question the Euro-centric approach still hidden behind our actions and to allow the debate about the meanings and preconceptions created by such collections. Collections should reflect the several regional traditions and their intersections.

The third participant in the communications session, Virginia Perez-Ratton, presented an in-depth analysis of the situation of the museum system in Central America and its relationship with the problems inherited from a colonial past. She spoke about the perpetuation of colonialism in present times in relation to the impact of US influence on this continent. She started her by talk showing a map and making ironic remarks to the audience about the location of Central American and Caribbean countries, including Costa Rica. Perez-Ratton commented on the ‘self-colonising’ attitude of Latin American countries in relation to the US, particularly in Central America – known as America’s ‘backyard’, and characterised by a process of de-colonisation and re-colonisation by the US. The region, unlike South America, has not undergone a process of independence. Since the second half of the 19th century it became a territory virtually occupied by the US – who established their industries and military operations in the area –, which resulted in the emergence of several guerrilla groups and armed conflicts until the end of the ‘80s. Although civil war never hit Costa Rica, political and social policies enforced in the country since the late ‘40s have affected its commercial relations with other countries in the region and attracted a massive influx of refugees (around 10 per cent of the population), coinciding with a huge economic crisis.

Drawing on this perspective, the artist showed the results of her experience with art projects for the public and private sectors in the Central American context. The projects involved the confrontation of her own background with international cultural institutions, the increasing intensification of the globalisation process and the need for a higher degree of control over this process, the rise of censorship resulting from the current wave of conservatism that dominates the international political scenario, and consequently affects cultural production, including in Central America. Perez Ratton suggested that we should try to find ways to deal with this situation, and that we should use our ‘backyard’ status as a space for critical reflection.

The peace process in Central America, initiated in 1989, resulted in different relations between the Right and the Left, the Army, the paramilitary militia, the counter-revolutionaries and the guerrillas in each country. The transformations that occurred gave rise to a new set of expectations, not only economic and social, but also concerning the networks of cultural production. Their first task, according to Perez-Ratton, was to get back on their feet. They should reject their recent past without forgetting their memory of inhumanities, violence and terror. They should recreate their own image in order to create a new place. Local collaborative projects started to take shape with a view to tackling several issues, such as the problem of the region’s ‘invisibility’. These were a reaction against the stereotypical image of the country promoted by governmental agencies, an attempt to fight against the romanticised view of Central America as the land of masculine guerrillas and volcanic landscapes, of untouched exotic forests, wild animals and piña colada. The aim was also to rectify the less attractive image of a region populated by a mass of uncultured indigenous people who are unable to make mature political decisions.

Central America is still undergoing a process of rebuilding its cultural infrastructure and, according to Perez-Ratton, this is being done bearing in mind that this is not only a different space, but also one with a different temporality. She stated that the region needs museums – strong museums – and not weak institutions that do not provide the adequate conditions for showing art, and that do not have the power to change the current situation, especially concerning the way Central Americans represent themselves. In Ratton’s view, any institution has some kind of power, and the most important question for the artist is how this power is going to be used. How can one use this power to mobilise a region towards a new idea of place when there is a generalised feeling of non-place, of not belonging?

The artist then introduced some of the fifteen existing museums in the region and said that Central American museums are in a precarious situation. There is a general struggle to organise exhibitions and to maintain, store and document modern and contemporary artistic productions. All the available resources are allocated to ethnographic museums because this is where tourists go. This is the case of the Guatemala Museum of Modern Art, that occupies the site of a former ballroom built by dictator Ubico in the ‘30s; the National Gallery of Honduras, whose collection is loaned from artists and their families; and the MARTE – Museum of Modern Art of El Salvador – the only purpose-built museum of the region and financed by local industrialists whose collection is loaned from the Julia Diaz Foundation and whose temporary exhibitions are rarely organised by their own staff. In Nicaragua, there are only the Julio Cortazar Contemporary Art Museum and the Ortiz Gurdian Collection, where Gurdian accumulates the duties of collector, curator and director of the space. The only museum in San José is the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design. In Panamá, there is the Museum of Contemporary Arts, whose director is also a gallerist.

In Costa Rica there is the Museum of Contemporary Arts, which was created in 1994 and, according to Perez-Ratton, it is the only institution in Central America that really functions as a museum with a regional character, displaying both Central American and international works. The museum became a point of reference in the region, attracting artists and disseminating information.

The project Teor/Ética (Theor/Ethics), run by the artist, seeks to follow a similar line. In twelve years it built a strong regional network, contributing to what Perez-Ratton named a ‘place’, a work space, a local circuit where Central America is the centre, a place of recognition and legitimisation.  

In the fourth and last talk in the panel, Argentinean art historian Ana Longoni analysed the relationship between the avant-garde and the institutions in the Buenos Aires context and introduced the current debates around activist art in the capital.

Her paper called to mind the historical campaigns of Italian Futurists, who believed that the museums should be burned down. According to the historian, this attitude was emblematic of the historical avant-gardes as the enemies of art institutions, and defined the very concept of avant-garde proposed by German critic Peter Bürger in his ‘Theory of the Avant-Garde’ (1973).

In other contexts, however, the avant-gardes have established a straight connection with institutions and, in some cases, even created them – especially where they were still incipient, as in Latin America and revolutionary Russia.

However, according to Büreger’s reading, the neo avant-gardes of the ‘60s were not authentic because they were soon absorbed by the institutions and their anti-art gestures quickly became ‘Art’. Consequently, their iconoclast attitude was neutralised and institutionalised.

Longoni departed from this well known theory to pose some questions regarding the tension between the avant-garde and the museums and the current post avant-garde movements. She proposed an alternative definition of the avant-garde based on the moments when an expansion of the limits of what can be called art takes place, including its destruction or extrapolation.

The historian quoted the example of ‘Tucumán Arde’ (an art project of the Argentinean avant-garde of the ‘60s, that was presented in the form of political-artistic actions such as the politically-charged exhibition organised at the headquarters of the Argentinean Union that openly denounced a critical political situation in the Tucumán province), which can be mistaken for a political act. Although it did have a very political connotation, ‘Tucumán Arde’ was also an experiment where art established a relationship with society, politics and daily life. It was not about seeing life from the outside, or art as an autonomous discipline, but it aimed to create new perspectives and reconnect it to life.

Longoni explained that the questions of the relationship between artists, art works and institutions in the Argentinean cultural and artistic context cannot be answered by using the scheme avant-gardes/ rupture with, neo avant-gardes/ integration with the museum. She also contended that one can no longer affirm – as previously – that there was a first period of cynicism where the relationship between the avant-garde and the modern institutional circuit was peaceful, passive and collaborative, followed by a heroic period starting in 1968 that concentrated the abrupt and definitive break of the avant-garde with the institution. Today, the relationship between the avant-gardes and the institutions, according to Longoni, is mutable and contradictory.

She sees the museum not simply as a container, but as a space for discussion and construction of meaning. The relationship between avant-gardes and institutions is often marked by a gap between the most radical aspects of the avant-gardes and the modernising drive of museums.

Finally, Longoni analysed some recent collaborative projects between artist collectives and social movements, as well as some practices that emerged in the last decade and which are undertaken by non-artistic groups who make use of the visual repertoire of the avant-gardes and neo avant-gardes (like the movement of the children of missing people). These practices have become the focus of important curatorial and institutional initiatives. Today, it seems that museums want to become more than simple containers or producers of exhibitions and to be able to articulate past and present experiences, a space that brings together artists and activists. However, in the Argentinean case, some of the practices that interact with the field of art explicitly choose to remain outside of it.

The last examples given by Longoni were related to the death of two ‘piqueteros’ (political protesters who barricade roads) on the 26th of June, 2002, at Pueyrredón Bridge, one of the main access routes into Buenos Aires. Three years after the killings, during the trial of the perpetrators, some artists groups organised themselves to remember the murders. Several of them took part in another blockade of the bridge along with the ‘piqueteros’. They camped there for 38 days. The GAC (Grupo de Arte Callejero) brought along their mobile targets – silhouettes of men, women and children with a blank space in the centre where the target’s ‘name’ was inscribed. It was an explicit call for participation. These targets had been used since 2004 in different contexts. In the campsite they were inscribed with the names of politicians involved in the murders, playfully reversing the notion of ‘victim-target’. The artist collective Ade! created a football game played, during the ‘piqueteros’ marches, using a ball made of bullet cartridges.

Next, Longoni commented on an exhibition at the Palais de Glace, a traditional art venue in Buenos Aires which hosts the country’s fine arts awards. The show, which took place between September and October 2005, paid homage to the murdered ‘piqueteros’ Kosteki and Sandillán. It worked through many ideas from the ‘70s, particularly the notion that the greatest work of art of a guerrilla fighter is revolution.

Kosteki and Santillán were presented as artists and some of their drawings, notes and paintings were exhibited. This somehow reversed the ‘70s neo avant-garde claims such as Rosário’s avant gardist statement that ‘Che Guevara’s life is a greater work of art that any bullshit hanging on any museum wall in the world’. According to Longoni, it is quite ironic that today the ‘piqueteros’ are considered artists because of their drawings. The passage of the artistic-political action from the streets into the museum often transforms that which was a direct intervention into documentation, creating all sorts of problems that are yet to be solved by the Argentinean artist collectives. Longoni believes that the recognition that there are ‘artistic’ and ‘non-artistic’ fields doesn’t necessarily imply being subjected to this limitation, but to put them into question.

(by Fernanda Pitta)