![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
This article discusses and analyses three exhibitions that focus on the Colombian bicentennial celebrations housed in the Museo Nacional, the Museo de la Independencia-Casa del Florero and the Iglesia Museo Santa Clara (all in Bogotá). In all three cases the occasion elicited generational enquiries and actual changes in cultural policy, signaling a transition towards the concept of the new museum, characterized by different conceptions of the viewing public and of the relationship between public and museum. In addition, the new museum marks the entry into the museum space of a wide gamut of new technologies and participatory forms in its effort to seduce the public. When addressing some of the polemics and discussions generated by and around these exhibitions, this article reflects on the place of both the traditional and the new museum as a site for the inscription of national narrative scripts and rethinking of the nation's cultural heritage. While charting these debates, it also gives space to reflection on the tectonics of neoliberalism and globalization and their challenges to concepts of “the national”, the reconfiguration of national destinies, and discussions around new social actors and movements.
Notes
1 CitationBeatriz González is a renowned Colombian artist and painting teacher at the University of the Andes (1962). Her contributions extend from the plastic arts to an immense number of publications and curatorial projects. Within the abundant bibliography on her work, mention can be made of the following references: the compilation of her works by Carmen María Jaramillo, Holland Cotter and María Margarita Malagón, published by Benjamín Villegas Editores (2006) and the documentary Beatriz González: ¿por qué llora si ya reí? (Citation2010) by the Colombian director Diego García-Moreno. González held the position of Chief Curator of the art and history collections of the National Museum from 1993 to 2004. Cristina Lleras is a psychologist at the University of Georgetown, art teacher at the national University of Columbia (2004) and PhD candidate in museum studies at Leicester University. According to the interview by the journal Arcadia, Lleras worked as González's assistant in the year 2003 and González endorsed her appointment as Chief Curator, a post that she has held since 2004.
2 Mariana Garcés, Minister of Culture, questioned the changes and the discrepancy between the various focuses of the National Museum's curatorship in an interview with the journal Arcadia, edition 27 March 2011. For a summary and discussion, consult the Sara Flore's entry of 10 April 2011 in the cultural blog Esfera Pública. http://esferapublica.org/. The interview ‘Two perspectives on the museum’ (Arcadia, 20 May), which contains the statements of González and Lleras, takes up the topic. On the cover of the journal, the photos of González and Lleras are mounted with a war canon from the Sala República de Colombia between them.
3 It is clear that by focusing my analysis on the celebrations in Bogotá, this article mirrors (involuntarily) the cultural centralism and hierarchy that it critiques. The selection of three museums in this city is linked on the one hand to the grandeur of the commemorative displays there, unmatched by any other Colombian city, and on the other to personal reasons for visiting Bogotá during the period in question which allowed me to be up-to-date with the exhibitions and the polemic.
4 The Museum's website contains a virtual exhibition that helps illustrate the content as well as the layout of the exhibition. See http://www.museonacional.gov.co/sites/bicentenario_site/RV/americas/_flash/rv_portal_americas/_flash/rv_portal_americas.html. For a complete review, with ample description of the exhibition's content, consult the work of CitationSebastián Vargas in the journal Memoria y sociedad.
5 This is the case for all three museums under discussion; I mention here Cristina Lleras, Daniel Castro and Constanza Toquica as the respective curators of the National Museum, Museo de la Independencia-Casa del Florero and the Iglesia Museo Santa Clara but, in reality, what is being discussed are curatorial teams under their leadership. For the exhibition in the National Museum, its accompanying book can be consulted as it contains essays by each one of the team members. The exhibition ‘Identities at stake before Independence’ was curated by Carlos Rojas, with Toquica as Chief Curator.
6 The phrase ‘effervescence and fervour’ is attributable to José Acevedo y Gómez, a criollo known as the ‘People's Tribunal’ who, affected by the fervour of the events of the Declaration of Independence, launched this slogan to animate the town of Santa Fe to rise up against the Spanish: ‘If you lose these moments of effervescence and fervour, if you let this unique and happy opportunity go by, before twelve hours are up you will be treated as insurgents: have a look at the cells, the insects and the chains that await you’. Although it is obvious that history is much more complex and transcendent, the original episode of 20 July 1810 is registered as much in performance as in pedagogy as a conflict between the brothers Antonio y Francisco Morales who take issue with José González Llorente – owner of a shop on the corner where the Museum is today – when the latter refuses to lend a vase to decorate a festive dinner for the royal visiting superintendent Antonio Villavicencio (also a criollo). The resulting fight is the origin of the story of independence in Colombian history.
7 Quotation taken from a document entitled ‘A new museum for Independence’ which outlines the participatory approach that launched the project to transform the National Museum, as well as the discussions on the proposed museology put forward. The process lasted six years and brought together architects, historians and curators, among others, in thematic working groups. See the text in the museum's webpage www.quintadebolivar.gov.co/museoindependencia/…/unnuevomuseo.pdf. The webpage of the Museo de la Independencia-Casa del Florero contains various sections and documents of interest to this discussion; consult http://www.quintadebolivar.gov.co/museoindependencia/.
8 The only virtual record existing to date of the exhibition ‘Identities at stake’ is the Iglesia Museo Santa Clara's official description at http://www.museocolonial.gov.co/?idcategoria = 40097>>
9 In ‘Símbolos patrios y nuevas fórmulas de identidad’, Sitios de contienda: producción cultural colombiana y el discurso de la violencia, I have extensively covered the problematic campaign Colombia es pasión.
10 In Mexico, the celebration coincided with the centenary of the Mexican Revolution. State investment was excessive despite the financial and social crisis largely related to the violence exerted by narco traffickers in the last years. Among many other activities, art shows of Mexican art – pre-Hispanic viceroyalty, modern and contemporary – were held in the main capitals of the world. Historic routes, shows, exhibitions, publications, colloquiums and seminars were organised in different cities in the country, including the opening of ten archaeological sites, the maintenance of the most important prehistoric sites of the country and the refurbishment of thirty museums as central settings for the Bicentenary. The most notable is the ‘Road 2010’, a reconstruction of the land paths representing the most important routes of the Independence and Revolution, and ‘The Roads of the Revolution’, in the same style but on the events of 1910 (see http://www.bicentenario.gob.mx). On Argentina see the report with graphics about the large official celebration of 25 May 2010 at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/argentinas_bicentennial.html. Along with this tremendous party for celebration, it is notable that the website of the government, as well as different television commercial adverts, presented a mixture of the most important national narratives dealing with a series of painful events deserving of a special place in Argentine history of the last few years (the Malvinas war and the desaparecidos for example). The essence of what was presented is available on the webpage http://www.bicentenario.argentina.ar/, preserving the original official notice: ‘What defines us as Argentineans? Choose the 220 symbols of the Bicentenary.’ In the virtual architecture of this page, the historical purge is alternated with recognised national achievements in the field of sciences, culture (with a very central role for cinema and literature), sports and education. Of course, in both cases (as well as in the Colombian one), the Bicentenary served as the backdrop for multiple discussions in physical and virtual forums, publications and conferences that questioned what was left out, the hegemony of the selections and the general concept of what is being celebrated.
11 A detailed list of this ‘complex set of exhibitions’ that characterised the Centenary celebrations in Latin America is available in the article by CitationBeatriz González-Stephan ‘Collect and exhibit: the construction of cultural patrimonies’.
12 As opposed to the centenary celebrations that demonstrated, as CitationCarolina Vanegas says ‘una tensión entre el proyecto gubernamental de centralizar la actividad conmemorativa en la capital y la opción regional de autorrepresentarse (sic)’ (2010: 116), the celebration of the bicentenary has a clear agenda of including the regions despite the fact that some of the processes in the said proposal are questionable. A revised version of the complete article by Vanegas reminds us that the bicentenary in Colombia is still very marked by the Hispanic project of unification, fearful of immigration, beliefs and languages that challenge the Spanish heritage (including if this is considered a negative memory). It is also woven within the emphasis in the union of Greater Colombia that makes frequent allusions to the heritage of Simón Bolívar. It is also laterally linked with the Bicentenary because as it comes face to face with a country demoralised in 1910 by events such as the War of a Thousand Days and the loss of the Panamá Canal in 2010 due to the prolonged armed conflict. See ‘Representations of Independence and the construction of a “national image” in the celebrations of the Centenary in 1910’.
13 Among its profitable transnational industry of soap operas, Colombia has a great repertoire of historical productions about figures linked to the history of the nation. The soap opera Citation La Pola based on the life of the heroine Policarpa Salavarrieta was aired on 13 September 2010.
14 This concept is quite literally aligned with the model of the European museum, which during the nineteenth century extended its galleries and decided on the content of its window displays according to how best to incorporate the findings of anthropology and archaeology. See Bennett (Citation1996).
15 See again my discussion in ‘Patriotic symbols and new formulas of identity’ in Sites of contest.
16 I am echoing the commentaries made by literature students at masters' level in the National University in our seminar on the Bicentenary which I led as a guest lecturer in the first semester of 2011. In the reports about the National Museum, the students admitted that 80% of the characters portrayed in reports about the National Museum were unknown to them, and that they felt far removed from the composition of the portraits, with many of the figures only recognisable due to the recurrence of their surnames in news items about power and propriety in Colombia.
17 The most famous pictorial representation of the events of 20 July 1810 is ‘The brawl’ by Pedro Alcántara Quijano. In this image, the presence of a street boy who watches the events in amazement is striking; a slight suggestion from the time of looking at history from the perspective of the marginal character.
18 The debate began in 2008 and Fory created a blog to keep track of the different interventions. See http://historianuestracaballero.blogspot.com/. It is interesting to plot the way this debate spread to cities such as Cali, which also has an important component of afro-descendants in its population. See the entry of CitationLucas Ospina in the blog Esfera pública.
19 In The Museum in Transition, CitationHilde Hein outlines a number of them: ‘curators today must be client-orientated, team players and present themselves to the exhibition teams as “resource-providers”’. Candidates for curatorial positions are expected to demonstrate academic capabilities and the capacity to cultivate benefactors of the museum; as well as this, they must be able to write and speak to the general public, and reconcile their disciplinary criterion with the more pragmatic proposals of the exhibitions' evaluators, public defenders, specialists in the market and ‘project managers’ whose skills may or may not include experience of the subject (2000, p. 143).
20 This exhibition enjoyed the auspices of America House in Cataluña and was organised by María José Pizarro, who has dedicated herself to the recovery and defence of the historical legacy of her father, Carlos Pizarro.
21 Lucas Ospina's defence of these exhibitions appears on the 24th of February 2011 in an entry on the blog http://esferapublica.org/. Alongside are published reactions in favour and against. Ospina revisits the arguments of the curator José Ignacio Roca in his critique of the National Artists' Salon of 2006.
22 See Vargas, p. 50.