Museum of Memory and Human Rights. Santiago, Chile

Maybe there are some things that can’t be explained. Some events in history are just too horrible to remember, but we hope that by honoring those who pay the ultimate price will keep us from falling in the vicious cycles of history.

Chile’s former president, Michelle Bachelet, understood the power of museums as a political instrument when her government (2006-2010) spearheaded the creation of an institution dedicated to remember the victims of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet as her legacy to the Chilean people. The Museum of Memory and Human Rights, created to unify the country in defense of democratic values, opened amid controversy in January 10, 2010. “The opening of this museum is a strong indicator of the strength of a united country.” President Bachelet announced during the opening ceremonies "...a union founded on a shared commitment to never again suffer a tragedy like that in this place we will always remember”.

The military dictatorship that took place from 1973 to 1990 is still a very divisive issue for Chile’s population. Other countries in the region, wrestling with their own difficult histories, have committed great state financial resources to acknowledge the victims of human rights abuses committed by their own citizens or political structures. The product of “Commissions of Truth”, as they are often called, are “Museums of Memory”, whose designs have been inspired by holocaust museums and memorials built in Europe and North America.

Memory Museums have been created in Argentina and are being built in Peru and Colombia. These institutions which purpose are often oriented to reveal to its own constituency the truth of a particular event in recent history –military dictatorship or civil war– and to recognize the lives of victims of abuse, have been funded by incumbent governments. One issue that emerges is how impartial can a state-run, or state-sponsored museum be about the historical actions of that government when the resources that keep the museum running come from the same government? This is why the exploration of history by these museums can be either one-sided or shallow.

Merely describing events, as opposed to interpreting them from different angles –the left and the right one – shows a clear determination to support one view over the other, exemplary of cultural institutions that cannot provide an impartial interpretation of history because by doing so they create a conflict of interest. A museum, one that is fair to its constituency, sits at the center of either end.

The Museum of Memory and Human Rights should commit to restore the memory of the victims of the military dictatorship as opposed to recount its events, to be more a memorial than just a museum. As a museum it has a doomed future as it compromises its mission, but as a memorial, it can create narratives that will truly connect its visitors to the interrupted human lives lost during those years.

Here is an example of how a particular interrupted life’s story is recounted in a museum that does this particularly well. Isadore was a self-employed cap maker. He was married and had seven sons. His family lived in a home next to the town’s center. Times were difficult but he was able to provide for his family. When his town was occupied by the military in early September, ten people were shot in his street, others such as doctors and teachers were taken away. While the military rounded up the men and held them in the market place, soldiers set the town on fire. Isadore, his wife Sossia and his seven sons where taken to a concentration camp where they were asphyxiated with exhaust fumes sometime in May of 1942.

I learned this during my visit to the Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Washington, DC on April 27 of 1995. I was handed a small booklet titled “For the dead and the living we must bear witness.” It was an identification Card, a card relating the story of Isadore Frenkiel, born ca. 1898 in Gabin, Poland whose fate, his wife’s and their sons, was to be killed in a concentration camp.

I was 24 years old when I learned about Isadore. Even though this event was so foreign, so removed and so far my reality, I am sure the story, the names and this injustice will stay with me until the day I die. In contrast, I do not remember one single Chilean, aside from Augusto Pinochet, from my visit to the Museum of Memory. 

Cartagena de Indias Historic Museum, Colombia

Museums are not finite organizations. These beloved institutions cannot remain idle with their stories. They must refreshed them to be enjoyed and understood by younger generations.

The Inquisition Palace - Cartagena de Indias Historic Museum, housed in a magnificent 17th century old building and at the center of one of the most beautifully restored colonial towns in the world, sadly misses the great opportunity of using history to inspire its visitors and to empower its community. 

To be fair, dealing with the thorny subject of the Catholic inquisition in an entertaining and inspiring way is a challenge. Colombia is about 90% Roman Catholic and most museums in the country struggle with the endemic problems of state-sponsored entities dedicated to preserve cultural heritage. I was excited about visiting the museum since I knew that it had gone through a renovation program. This was my third visit, and this time I was showing the museum off to a friend who was traveling with me.

The experience of this museum is a series of unconnected events that begins with people trying to sell their services as tour guides as you enter the building. With no signage to guide me, I discovered that some historic rooms are now use as offices, the outdoor areas are used as a parking lot and galleries on the ground floor display the museum’s collection of torture devices. Furthermore, what I believe were temporary galleries, displayed an exhibition about graphic design and a collection of sculptures by the acclaimed Colombian artist Enrique Grau. My friend and I were confused and disappointed.

The museum renovation I was looking forward to see washed out the museum of its history, reduced the size of its exhibit areas and lost focus to its own mission. I understand how difficult it is to run a museum successfully with little financial resources, but this museum does have other great resources that simply need to be harnessed well. First, how about one single name, but a brand, not just a description of its purpose. I would suggest “Museum of the New World.”  A better brand broadens the mission and could make the content of the museum more digestible for visitors from all over interested in the formation of the New World (the Americas). 

There should be, of course, a permanent exhibition dedicated to the Spanish Inquisition. After all, that is what happened in this building. During the colonial era, this house served as a tribunal court and tried anyone the church viewed as a heretic. But even if the Spanish Inquisition tortured thousands of people, so to interpret this historic event with a gallery of torture devices is partly inevitable, but if that is all, it misses a more interesting perspective from which local residents and tourists alike can draw a lesson relevant to their lives today such as the influence of peoples’s migrations, the use of religion as a political tool or dogma to masquerade bigotry.

Subjects such as life in the colonies of the New World, the power and splendor of the Spanish empire circa 1500, and its ultimate decline and legacy are themes that will make this museum a real attraction. The exhibition can be designed to give visitors, of diverse ages and backgrounds, a view to Colombian society as it was influenced and transformed by the arrival of Europeans, Africans and later immigrants. Artifacts, replicas, sound, literature, and the latest technologies in visual presentation will be used to trace the stories of men and women who lived, prayed, worked, murder or were murdered within those rooms. The story of the Inquisition certainly does not lack drama, and its museum shouldn’t lack it either. It is precisely drama that visitors expect from a museum today.

Visitors also expect a museum to have extensions that magnify and fortify its mission: a store, a café, a library, a screening room, a reception room, a play room, etc. Each of these environments are conceived with the purpose of expanding the museum’s mission, and by doing so, museums create money-making enterprises beyond entrance fees: films, theater shows, social events, publications, etc. The museum can create and sell spectacles, experiences, and products that truly relate to the public. 

As for who will be the avatar of this development campaign, the improved institution could be managed by a non-state, non-profit enterprise that will be responsible for orchestrating and supervising all the different entities that will finance and provide the experiences offered by the museum: film presentations, food services, store, etc. The director will steward the museum’s brand, provide a vision to its partners, give contracting jobs to local creative industries (video producers, graphic artist, etc.) and build a vibrant community around the museum: contractors, employees, volunteers, donors, contributors and visitors. 

To provide checks and balances, the museum could be monitored by a diverse board that is ultimately in charge of raising and managing all the funds necessary to make it sustainable. This may be the most difficult obstacle to overcome as trends around the world suggest that state founding for cultural institutions will only decrease in the future. But once the institution demonstrates that it can attract the public, private support or new partners will also want to be part of the museum community.

The Inquisition Museum has great resources: its buildings, its history and its community. The board of directors need to look carefully at these resources to uncover their full potential: the correct use of its historic buildings, a boarder interpretation of their history and engaging a community that ultimately will be the source of its sustainability.

New Art Merchants for New Art Markets

AAF New York, Fall 2010. Photo Credit Alejandro Ben Chimol

Here the dealers of the plastic art world wait for their prey. Using color, shape and luster they enchant the paying VIPs many of whom unschooled about the art they see.

This scene repeats itself at hundreds of art fairs. Popular events these days, usually held in cities both large and small, often for people with large disposable incomes. But not anymore. The Affordable Art Fair (AAF) provides art for the masses. “Art is Everywhere” read the promotional posters shown in the local news and entertainment magazines last summer. The AAF has been produced since 2003 and today it sets up camp in almost all continents.

It is a tricky thing to understand the art market, especially in New York where this market is actually made up by just about 70% of its population. Being the center of the art world, in this city everyone has a chance to buy original art from almost everywhere in the planet. That is the market opportunity AAF provides: art from $100 to $10.000 and the chance to start an art collection. But when you can buy art for $100, are you collecting or are you decorating?

Purchasing decisions at AAF seem to be based on bright colors, sheen, pop themes and how it fits in “my living room” than about the artist, his/her career, influences, messages, etc.  Set with the task of selling art at this kind of venues, you should be aware that a fair is still a fair, even if it as an “art” fair. At AAF a work of art is a cheap commodity. It is a thing, framed, prepackaged, transported, stacked, displayed, sold, packaged and finally consumed.

Probably the most successful booth at the AAF this Fall, “20x200” understands this medium and its message well. This is a shop that sales art by the price not by the quality of the art. They were quite successful. At times their staff seemed like they were selling Magnolia cupcakes, lines and all. “20x200” sold reproductions starting at $100.  “Art for Everyone” is their tag line.

For gallerists –you have to be one to pass admission as an exhibitor– a species of the art ecosystem certainly on its the way to extinction, things are hard at AAF.   Real gallerists curate. They cultivate individual talent. They are artist-focused and mediate the relationships of the artists with the buyer. Real gallerists have to sell more than art, they have to sell the artist. They live in a very uncertain world: buyers are fickle, undecided and sometimes out-right rude. Gallerists get indecent proposals at the end of a show. And yes! It involves a little money in exchange for precious goods. They pay lots of money in rent and have to sale at any rate to pay costs. This is why gallerists become street walkers, ready to deal for the quickest, best offer; no ties, no commitments.

Are we seeing the birth of a new merchant in the art world? The internet has certainly created that opportunity.  For now say welcome to the new big players of the art game: fair organizers and labor unions. Collectors and Auction houses are also part of it, but these I would say are from a parallel universe. They all want a piece of the cake. Before the collapse of Lehman Brothers there seemed to be a piece for everybody. The good news is that art market is expanding to emerging economies, guest how: through the art fairs big international brands: Art Basel, Pulse and now Pinta.


The new emerging classes want to be part of the first world and are ready to spend their disposable income in art that speaks to them in a different language.

CULTURAL HERITAGE EDITOR

One more reason why cultural heritage should not be managed only by public interest.

Una razón más del por que la herencia cultural no debe ser manejada solamente por intereses públicos.

Iraq’s Modern Art Collection, Waiting to Re-emerge - NYTimes.com

HOME EDITOR

How to Lose a Legacy - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

Giving Museumgoers What They Want

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/arts/design/16oakland.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

A Tax Deduction for Erotica? The Museum of Sex Favors It