3rd Meeting of European and Latin-American Museums

A public activity within the 3rd Meeting of European and Latin American Museums, this lecture examines the crossroads that contemporary museums are currently facing. Motivated by the new notions of collection and art, but also aware of global interests, Ticio Escobar examines the potential and the danger of this new institution.

Modern times, and especially contemporary times, have led to a crisis in the traditional museum model. The basic function of this model is the custody of forms of heritage that express and sustain local imaginaries or that define certain historical stages or styles. Modernity complicated this model and as a result it was altered, the museum being entrusted with new tasks in the areas of research, documentation and archiving, and also a greater engagement in social and community development and a new degree of attention to citizen presence. But it also put the museum institution face to face with the complicated task of reconciling its new democratizing objectives with the potent interests of the art market.

The speed of the transnationalisation of culture has made these questions even more pressing. Now the museum not only must open up to the public space, it must open up to a public space that is largely globalised. This space is one that imposes different configurations of social imaginaries, most of which are based on mobile and provisional identities. Museum space has thus become crisscrossed by images of different cultures and moved by a plurality of intentions and purposes.

Finally, the collapse of the modern autonomy of art has led to the crisis of the museum closed behind a definitive notion of art. This promotes, in consequence, the contamination of museum spheres, which are forced to confront the blows of history and the infiltration of disciplines, problems and concepts that were previously unknown in the strict domains of art. This change of paradigm requires a new definition not only of the concept of museum but also of art itself, a task that began decades ago and entails the unexpected return of ontological perspectives that had been left behind. This lecture seeks to explore these questions and, with absolutely no intention of proposing models, to examine specific cases that constitute possible alternatives in the rethinking of museums.

Ticio Escobar (Asunción, 1947) is a researcher, curator, art critic and essayist. He is the author of the National Law on Culture of Paraguay. Founder and director until 2008 of the Indigenous Art Museum / Mud Museum, he is a former Secretary of Culture of the government of Paraguay. He has been the curator of the São Paulo Biennial and has also curated Paraguay’s representation at numerous other biennial events. He has published, among other studies, La belleza de los otros: arte indígena del Paraguay (1993), Sobre cultura y Mercosur (1995), El arte en los tiempos globales (1997), El arte fuera de sí (2004) and La invención de la distancia (2013).

The growing weight of private capital and the simultaneous decapitalisation of state art institutions bring about challenges and various unknowns when establishing criteria of value and social dimensions that go further than those imposed by the market. This affects the entire system, including private and corporate collecting, which requires recognisable frameworks of reference and visibility. In addition, globalisation demands a harmonisation of the different ways of understanding the relationship between private and public in different cultural contexts.

Participants:

Patrick D. Flores, Curator of the Vargas Museum, Manila (Philippines)
Rafael García, Exhibition coordinator at Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid
Lola Hinojosa, Performing Arts and Intermedia curator at the Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid
Soledad Liaño, Exhibition coordinator at Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid
Natalia Majluf, Director, Lima Museum of Art - MALI (Peru)
Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Director of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Foundation (Caracas and NY)
José Roca, Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art, Tate Gallery (London)
Berta Sureda, Director of Public Activities at the Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid
Luis Augusto Teixeira, Collector (Rio de Janeiro)

Moderated by:

João Fernandes, Deputy Art Director at the Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid

The information society and the breakaway from old institutional structures have deeply transformed the notions of heritage based on the accumulation of objects, exclusivity and national identity. There is an urgent need to seek ways to meet the emotional demands and thirst for democratic participation of new societies, as well as methods to combat the displacement of the local that has been intensified by international economic flows.

Participants:

Zdenka Badovinac, Director of the Moderna Galerija de Ljubljana (Slovenia)
Pablo León de la Barra, Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator for Latin America
Cristina Cámara, Film and video curator at the Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid
Cosmin Costinas, Director of Para Site (Hong Kong)
Ticio Escobar, Curator, professor, art critic and cultural promoter (Paraguay)
Vasif Kortun, Director of research and programmes at SALT, Istanbul (Turkey)
Ana Longoni, CONICET researcher and professor at the University of Buenos Aires and PEI (MACBA). Promoter of the Southern Conceptualisms Network
Cuauhtémoc Medina, Chief curator of the MUAC (Mexico City)
Steven ten Thije, Research curator at the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven)

Moderated by:

Jesús Carrillo, Head of Cultural Programmes at the Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid

The session is comprised of two public discussions between four participants, in which they will share the various issues discussed above in the tables.

Discussion Panel 1

12:30 p.m. - 01:30 p.m.

Discussion Panel 2

01:30 p.m. - 02:30 p.m.