Very few know that the pieces they exhibit Most museums in the world They represent only 10 percent of their heritage. That figure, which varies in relation to the size of the institution’s collection, leaves a universe of wonders and treasures that remain locked in deposits out of view of the public.
“Secret Museum ”called this reserve of hidden works the first director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Eduardo Schiaffino, in 1926when he demanded more space to exhibit the valuable pieces that the institution already had. And it was that expression that inspired the current director, Andrés Duprat, and the Team of the Fine Arts to plan an exhibition that gathered paintings and sculptures of all times, styles and artists belonging to the collection, which deserved to be known by the public.
“Secret Museum From the reservation to the room ” It was precisely the name chosen for the sample that has just been inaugurated and that brings together works of about 300 painters, recorders and sculptors, Argentine and foreigners, who belong to the institution’s collection.
Upon entering the rooms destined to the exhibition, the quantity and quality of the works impacts, hung next to each other, maintaining the way in which they are ordered within a real reserve, and gathered with laxic criteria on topics such as the nude, The dead nature, the portrait or the urban landscape. The names of the authors are also shocking, of Prilidiano Pueyrredón to Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, from Picasso to Berni and Mondongo or from Spilimbergo A from Chiricothey cover an important cast of old and current teachers, which cross schools, techniques and contexts. The quality and quantity of the works is surprising. They merit dedicating a long afternoon, willing to discover unknown jobs for most Argentines.
The treasures
Visiting this sample drives to learn more about the museum’s heritage and the criteria with which it is decided what is exhibited and what is stored. To answer those questions, News dialogue with Andrés Dupratwho for years is in charge of the Museum of Fine Arts.
“In the permanent script around 1500 works are exhibited, 12 percent of the total collection that is 13,500,” explained Duprat. It is a usual proportion. In very large museums, such as the Prado or the Louvre, that proportion is much lower, about 5 percent. Some of the works that are exhibited in ‘Secret Museum’ were in the permanent script, others in temporary samples and others is the first time they come to light. They are also usually seen in exhibitions outside our headquarters. ”
The inequality of the figures between what is shown and what does not also indicate an obvious fact: the museum has enough space to display its collection constantly. “We always have longing and need to expand our surface. There is an extension draft that we hope to specify at some point and, meanwhile, we pall this situation by organizing exhibitions outside our headquarters, in the capital or in the provinces, ”says Duprat. The last project that was raised was on a property in the Plaza de los Dos Congresos, near Gaumont cinema. But the building had to be done, something quite distant at the current situation. And the building must allow the collection to continue growing and that the public can access the works. This modality is getting stronger and stronger throughout the world. The veil that made the reserve a space only for experts, conservatives and researchers has run. ”
But, although the reserve contains great works and treasures, it is the permanent exhibition that shows the most outstanding paintings and sculptures. “The ‘highlights’ are in the permanent exhibition. There are pieces that are always, such as’La Gioconda ‘in the Louvre. They will never go down. We have “the return of the malon” (from Della Valle), “Without bread and without work” (De la Cárcova), the Cándido López series and the amount of other very important European and North American pieces. They will always be because they give identity to the museum collection, ”explains Duprat.
The changes in the scripts of the permanent exhibition or the temporary samples organized by the institution make certain pieces enter and leave the reserve and become known by the public, while others have been hidden for years. The “Secret Museum” shows available to all those less known works that could be transformed, in the light of a new reading, in a new era, in the favorites of the public from here on.
Assembly and curatorship
“Secret Museum” was the result of a collective curatorship, in which different areas of the institution participated: the research, assembly, conservation area. “I liked the monitoring of the assembly, without respecting so much schools and chronologiesbut trying to put in a dissimilar piece dialogue, generating interesting links and tensions. It is a type of exposure that tries to make visual memory of Argentina, exhibiting pieces that have not been so seen and that belong to us all, because it is a public collection, ”explains Duprat.
To continue step by step this surprising meeting of artists and pieces, in each room a list in plasticized paper awaits the visitor with the detail of each work. To discover an unknown creator or an ignored painting of a famous name or a new way of interpreting the relationship between two styles, “Secret Museum” rearms before each spectator and holds completely unexpected scenes and feelings.
You may also interest you
Image gallery
