The slow death of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas

Works by Francis Bacon in one of the rooms of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas in 2014 Vallera Gabriel

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Caracas has become a mystery. Its doors are often closed and the most recurring question is whether it will not reopen again. The decline of one of the most complete and recognized modern art spaces in Latin America has been evident for a few years. Only one showroom works, leaking and leaking. There is no private patronage within it and the center has lost its link with international artistic centers. The novelties that are exhibited always have a clear ideological bias aligned with Chavismo, in power since 2000.

The dismissal in 2001 of its founder, Sofía Imber, one of the most outstanding public managers that Venezuela has had, began to progressively empty the good star of this place of content to submerge it in the zone of darkness. Political polarization alienated the best-known artists. The public withdrew from the museum. The library is closed. Also its cafeteria and the sculpture garden. There is no outreach material. There are few personnel, and what little there is is dedicated to renting their spaces illegally.

Created during the years of the oil boom, the Sofía Imber Museum of Contemporary Art - renamed Armando Reverón in these years - was, together with the Museum of Fine Arts and the National Art Gallery, the jewel in the crown of a system that became be a pride of the nation for the quantity and quality of its artistic material. Its permanent collection includes works by Pablo Picasso, Vasily Kandinski, Marc Chagall, Ferdinand Leger, Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, Claude Monet, August Rodin, Fernando Botero, Maurice Utrillo, Jesús Soto, Georges Braque, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Joan Miró, among other artists.

"The Museum of Contemporary Art has been closed for a long time," says specialist Sergio Antillano, former director of the Caracas Science Museum. “National museums do not exist. A museum is an institution in which research is conducted, heritage is cultivated, and knowledge is disseminated. A museum is not a repository of works. All that has to be rebuilt. "

The rumors of the closure of the Museum of Contemporary Art are increasing. The Minister of Culture, Ernesto Villegas, denied it: “It is not strange that on the eve of good cultural news, evil is activated. Throughout December the exhibition

, by the artist Alejandro Plaza will

remain open

. The versions about the definitive closure of the museum, and its malevolent echoes, appear when there are hours left for Unesco to approve the inclusion of the eighth Venezuelan cultural manifestation in the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity: the festivities of San Juan Bautista ”, He said.

One of the most criticized decisions that Chavismo made to administer the country's museum system consisted of curtailing their autonomy to develop initiatives and manage their heritage, with the creation of the National Museums Foundation, an entity that, from then on, would have the last word in various neuralgic aspects of management.

Then there was also the definitive decline of the figure of curatorships as a qualitative parameter and the distancing from private galleries. These decisions, in the early years of Hugo Chávez, were made by his then minister, Farruco Sesto. Venezuelan museums were forced to standardize their collections and lost their creative freedom. "Taking away from a museum its collection in the name of the State is like taking a son from his father in the name of the State," says Antillano. "Museums have to have authority over their assets. Under this parameter, the Science Museum was forced several times to give its works to museums in the interior of the country under any argument, or to organize forced exhibitions to please the discourse of the regime. "

"Right now there are two open rooms out of 24 that the Museum of Fine Arts has," says curator and researcher Nicomedes Febres, owner of an outstanding catalog of Latin American art.

“Qualified personnel have left.

Hardly anyone goes to exhibitions.

Political loyalty is required.

The artistic criterion has disappeared. "

The decisions of the Chavista regime are also based on the prejudice against the artistic fact that inhabits many officials of the ruling party, who usually consider these spaces as bourgeois, and where it is frequent that they fall into the temptation to adulterate their morphology by forcing a popular discourse alien to their identity.

The state of the heritage

After the famous theft, and subsequent recovery of

by Henri Matisse, at the beginning of the 21st century, rumors have returned about the theft of paintings and their alleged deterioration. Last year, the Judicial Police thwarted the theft of works by Carlos Cruz Diez and Gertrudis Goldschmidt,

, valued at thousands of dollars, by internal officials. "During Chavismo, some works have been acquired for the Museum of Contemporary Art, although it was not a priority," says journalist Simón Villamizar. "Even by artists opposed to the regime, like Alexander Apóstol."

"I am convinced that the collections of Venezuelan museums are almost complete and I believe that the current minister is aware of the importance they have," says Sergio Antillano.

“But of course works have been lost.

Where is the collection of Egyptian art at the Museum of Fine Arts?

Nobody knows."

"I have talked with Minister Villegas about the current state of the museum," says Adriana Meneses, gallery owner and daughter of Sofía Imber, founder of MAC.

“The minister has assured me that the museum is not going to close and they are going to recover their spaces, and I want to believe him.

According to what experts inform me, and although this is not known, the authorities have done a very demanding job of accounting for their assets.

The works in the Museum are complete and in good condition, thank God. "

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