Sunday, April 25, 2010

Art or the memory of it (1)

Artistic memory represents one of my topics of interest of the moment. I am discovering several ways in which art is used to remember the dictatorial past as well as manners in which art memorizes the past (independently of a political order). Currently I am looking at the official memory of art through the establishment of museums in South America. Chilean president Michelle Bachelet ended her term by inaugurating (as Chirac did in 2006 with Musee du Quai Branly although with a higher symbolic weight in the Chilean case) the Museum of Memory and Human rights in Santiago de Chile. Such museums exist in several parts of Argentina (Museum of Rosario), including Buenos Aires where the infamous ESMA has been (partially) transformed in a museum. A museum of memory was opened in Uruguay and another one in Asuncion, Paraguay. A plan to open a museum has been also discussed in Peru in the aftermath of the regime of Fujimori and the repression launched against the Shining Path; there already is a small museum in Ayacucho as well as a permanent exhibition (Yuyanapaq) in Lima's museum of art.

The museum in Santiago