Transnational socialist encounters in the Second Socialist World: the case of the Chilean Museum of Solidarity

ABSTRACT

The objective of this article is to analyze from an interdisciplinary perspective, that uses transnational and cross-regional cultural studies of the Second Socialist World, the unique example of the Chilean Museum of Solidarity in the context of its relations with the socialist countries in Eastern Europe during the 1970s. The originality of this case study is that it has not been previously analyzed and it helps explain the threads uniting countries of the Second Socialist World and the role of cultural relations as they were established during the Cold War between socialist countries in the south and the east. As a methodology, this article uses a qualitative “small number” approach to analyze cultural relationships between socialist countries. The conclusions show that, for some countries, such as Romania, cultural relations were important in establishing an autonomous policy from Moscow, such as that of Nicolae Ceausescu, but the type of artistic exchanges promoted witnessed an aesthetic paradox, supporting a depoliticized version of art. Moreover, the path-dependency argument for cultural relationships between socialist countries is partially verified.

RESUMEN

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar desde una perspectiva interdisciplinaria, que utiliza la perspectiva de los estudios culturales transnacionales y transregionales del “Segundo Mundo Socialista”, el ejemplo único del Museo Chileno de la Solidaridad en el contexto de sus relaciones con los países socialistas de Europa del Este durante la década de 1970. La originalidad de este estudio de caso es que no ha sido analizado previamente y ayuda a explicar los hilos que unen a los países del “Segundo Mundo Socialista” y el papel de las relaciones culturales tal como se establecieron durante la Guerra Fría entre los países socialistas del Sur y el Este. Como metodología, este artículo utiliza un enfoque cualitativo de “números pequeños” para analizar las relaciones culturales entre países socialistas. Las conclusiones muestran que para algunos países, como Rumania, las relaciones culturales fueron importantes para establecer una política autónoma de Moscú, como la de Nicolae Ceaușescu, pero el tipo de intercambios artísticos promovidos fue testigo de una paradoja estética, apoyando una versión despolitizada del arte. Además, el argumento de la trayectoria dependiente de las relaciones culturales entre países socialistas está parcialmente verificado.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum of Solidarity
• Eastern Europe
• transnational
• Chile
• cultural cold war

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Museo de Solidaridad
• Europa del Este
• transnacional
• Chile
• guerra fria cultural

Notes

1 Jorge Glusberg (1932–2012) was an Argentine conceptual artist and curator. In 1968 he founded, together with other artists, the Centro de Arte y Comunicación in Buenos Aires (CAyC) which became an important site of exhibition of conceptual art.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2021-0649, within PNCDI III.

Notes on contributors

Caterina Preda

Caterina Preda, PhD, Habil. is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest, where she teaches undergraduate courses on Latin American politics, Art and politics, and a graduate course on Cultural memory in South America and Eastern Europe. Her research is interdisciplinary and deals with art in dictatorships and artistic memory in post-dictatorships in South America and Eastern Europe (Chile and Romania). She is the author of Art and Politics under Modern Dictatorships (Palgrave, 2017). Her most recent research projects dealt with the case of the Romanian Union of Fine Artists (UAP), and the art and politics of memory of the dictatorships in South America and Eastern Europe (2018–2020), www.caterinapreda.ro, [email protected].