The visibility Problem: Museums and Temporary exibitions

Abstract

This paper begins with the understanding of art museums as privileged spaces of enunciation and, therefore, their importance for the visibility for producers and artworks. They are conceptualized as complex communication devices, that not only shelter, preserve, investigate and exhibit their patrimonial heritage, but also program temporary exhibitions, apart from developing other kind of activities for diffusion and education; activities intended to public construction.

Specifically, the interest of the present work lies in highlighting museums policies related to temporary exhibitions, since they invigorate the circulation of publics by offering a varied and in constant renewal agenda and, above all, they display the exercise of inherent power that they apply as consecrating institutions in and outside the artistic field. In other words: they represent, despite the constant and historical museophobic attacks, one of the most important institutions for the arts and culture because they give recognition and legitimacy to the artistic producers. Therefore, they become a space of desire and dispute for and by artists.

To account for this phenomenon, the different temporary exhibitions of the Provincial Museum of Fines Arts Emilio Caraffa of Córdoba, and the National Museum of Fines Arts of Buenos Aires will be analyzed between 1983 and 2001. These cases were selected because they represent, in the general social imaginary of their respective scenes, the highest of Argentine art.

Specifically, this article seeks to make visible how the different artistic languages "‹"‹(modern and contemporary) are themed and how these institutions put them on the scale for the construction of the programming of their exhibition areas.