María Isabel Baldasarre, “Museums and Collections in Latin America (Southern Cone) since 1800” en: Erick Langer (ed.), World Scholar: Latin American & the Caribbean. Gale, Cengage Learning, 2012.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Buenos Aires, Río de Janeiro, São
Paulo, and Santiago de Chile sought to achieve the status of “modern” city. One aspect
of that effort was the establishment of art institutions—salons, museums, and
academies. As a consequence, the making and purveying of art was professionalized.
Increasingly affluent immigrants and members of the local bourgeoisies became
consumers of art, lending these urban centers a cosmopolitan air. The influx of foreign
investment enabled urban reform and building expansion projects, through which these
cities attempted to become reflections of European capitals. The emergent urban
bourgeoisie enjoyed newfound wealth and was ready to spend it in support of culture. In
other capitals, like Lima and Bogotá, a stronger colonial legacy accounted for a slower
embrace of modern culture. Nevertheless, the upper classes in those cities did engage in
art collecting, with a particular taste for pre-Hispanic and colonial pieces as well as the
European traditional and contemporary art that was popular throughout the region.
Affluent Latin Americans traveled to and sometimes took up residence in Europe,
seeking exposure to “high culture” and to acquire paintings and sculptures for art
collections back home. Such collectors showed a marked preference for European
painting and a certain disregard for Latin American art. They shared in the prevailing
attitude equating European culture with civilization and regarded native art as still in its
infancy. At the same time, the collecting practiced by the Latin American bourgeoisies
was guided by a patriotic sense and a strong civic purpose to stimulate and strengthen
the artistic development of their countries. Thus owners of private collections made
art-lovers to view them in collectors’ homes. In the clearest expression of the civic
nature of art-collecting, collectors donated art to museums or made it available to
museums through purchase.
Brazil
The Academia Imperial de Belas Artes of Río de Janeiro (Imperial Academy of Fine
Arts) was founded in 1826 and nationalized as Escola de Belas Artes (School of Fine
Arts) in 1890. The Imperial Academy also functioned as an exhibition space that housed
salons (the General Exhibitions of Fine Art, celebrated annually since 1840) and solo
shows. From the mid-nineteenth century the directors sought to nationalize the Imperial
Academy and began to form a collection of Brazilian art. Local artists who had trained
with foreign masters gained a place to exhibit their work and the chance to sell it to the
national collection; others obtained prices that allowed them to finance their training in
Europe. In the late nineteenth century, the other major exhibition space for Brazilian
artists was the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios (School of Arts and Crafts) in Rio de Janeiro a
private institution created by the Sociedade Propagadora das Belas Artes in 1856 to
provide training in the Arts and Crafts style. In Rio de Janeiro’s active scene of casas,
or salons, such as Moncada, Glace Élégante, Vieitas, De Wilde, Conçalves & Cia, and
Atelier Moderno, local and foreign artists could regularly exhibit and sell their work.
Around 1908 the opening of the Galeria Jorge provided the city with a more
professional space for temporary exhibitions.
In 1937 the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes was established in Río de Janeiro,
absorbing the collection of the Escola de Belas Artes. Among the collectors who
donated major modern works of art to strengthen the museum’s collection were the
donation to the museum in 1922 of sixty-four pieces included twenty canvases by the
nineteenth-century French landscape painter Eugène Boudin.
In the early twentieth century, São Paulo bourgeois, having amassed wealth through the
highly lucrative coffee trade, became keenly interested in collecting art. The first art
museum in the city, the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (Art Gallery of the State of
São Paulo), began as a gallery in 1905 and was transformed into a state museum in
1911. From 1910 to 1920, in comparison with Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo was more
conducive to the selling and buying of art. Artists displayed their works in the city’s
active network of galleries and a variety of commercial spaces, where a new group of
avid collectors could satisfy their desire for the latest art.
The Liceu de Artes e Ofícios of Sao Paulo, founded in 1873, moved to a new building
that also housed the Pinacoteca, forming one of the best exhibition spaces in the city at
the turn of the century. The public attended important shows there, including major solo
and group exhibitions by Brazilian artists. Two collectors, Ramos de Azevedo, an
engineer and impresario, and José de Freitas Valle, a poet and politician, spearheaded
the establishment of this new center for art. Although both favored academic and
symbolist art, they also played an important role in the emergence of the Brazilian
modernist movement as did other members of the São Paulo elite (such as Paulo da
Silva Prado and Olívia Guedes Penteado). This support for early modernism was unique
in the Southern Cone. Although the Asociación Amigos del Arte (Association of
Friends of Art), active in Argentina between 1924 and 1942, was receptive to modernist
developments in art, the commitment of the São Paulo elite was largely responsible for
Chile
Although the Santiago Painting Academy was founded in 1849 and the Sculpture
Academy in 1854, until 1880 there were few spaces for permanent art exhibitions in
Santiago de Chile. In 1880 private citizens, in alliance with the government, organized
and founded the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts). A
key figure in this project was the private collector Marcos Maturana (1802–1871), a
politician and general in the Chilean military who formed the commission that
conceived the museum and contributed to its foundational collection. Maturana’s
collection included works attributed to European schools from the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries as well as work by the French painter Raymond Monvoisin
(1790–1870), who lived and worked in Chile for a decade. In 1884 the First National
Exhibition of Chilean art was organized, and the next year a “parthenon” was built at
the Quinta Normal to house the museum and hold local and foreign shows. This project,
created by the Unión Artística, a painters association, passed into state hands in 1887. In
1910, to mark the centennial of Chilean independence, a new building to house the
museum was completed. Other major bequests to the museum include
nineteenth-century European and Chilean paintings from the collection of the poet and politician
Eusebio Lillo, nineteenth-century and contemporary French and Chilean drawings and
paintings from the collection of Carlos Cousiño Goyenechea, and nineteenth-century
Spanish paintings from the collection of Santiago Ossa Amstrong.
In the late nineteenth century, private collectors in Buenos Aires were actively engaged
in acquiring works of art. These collectors, who were fond of the old masters but
concentrated their efforts on contemporary European pieces, invited art students and
connoisseurs and amateurs alike into their homes to view the art on display. Their
collections played a pivotal role in the founding of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
in 1895. For example, in his will of 1892 military officer Adriano Rossi left a group of
one hundred artworks (mostly Italian) to the museum to constitute the foundation of its
holdings. The bequest of more than five hundred items in the 1930s by descendants of
the Guerrico family, which had assembled one of the most impressive collections of
nineteenth-century French, Italian, and Spanish paintings and sculptures in Latin
America, also included Hispanic American silver, ivories, small bronzes, and Japanese
art.
Two other institutions were founded in the early twentieth century, the Academy of
Fine Arts in 1905 and the National Salon for Argentinean artists in 1911. At this time in
Buenos Aires a thriving market emerged for foreign and local art. Galleries such as
Costa, Witcomb, and Müller showed both European and Argentinean art of the past and
present, allowing local consumers of culture to discover contemporary artists.
Bibliography
Badawi, Halim. “El coleccionismo de arte en Colombia durante La Regeneración
Modernidades divergentes: III Seminario Internacional, pp. 199–224. Bogotá:
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2010.</BIBCIT>
Baldasarre, María Isabel. Los dueños del arte: Coleccionismo y consumo cultural en
Buenos Aires.Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2006.
Baldasarre, María Isabel. “Sobre los inicios del coleccionismo y los museos de arte en
la Argentina.” Anais do Museu Paulista,14, no. 1 (Jan.–June 2006): 293–321.
Fiamma, Paula, et al. “El modelo europeo: Crónica de una ilusión.” In 1900–1950:
Modelo y representación. Santiago de Chile: Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2000.
Knauss, Paulo. “O cavalete e a paleta. Arte e prática de coleccionar no Brasil.” Anais do
Museu Histórico Nacional, 33 (2001): 23–44.
Miceli, Sergio. Nacional estrangeiro: História social e cultural do modernismo artístico
em São Paulo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003.
<BIBCIT>Rossi, Mirian Silva. “Circulação e mediação da obra de arte na Belle Époque
paulistana.” <I>Anais do Museu Paulista</I> 6/7 (1998–1999): 83–119.</BIBCIT>
<BIBCIT>Schell, Patience A. “High Art and High Ideals: The Museo Nacional de
Pintura and the Development of Art in Chile, 1870–1890.” <I>Relics and Selves:
Iconographies of the National in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1880–1890</I>.
Interactive Web site of the Iberoamerican Museum of Visual Culture. Available from
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/ibamuseum/texts/Schell02.htm.</BIBCIT>
