While the audience, also made up of
families with children,
toured the very traditional
Fernández Blanco Museum on Saturday afternoon,
the Ópera Periférica group presented a performance entitled "Mermaids in Electronic Gardens", which is part of their series "Baroque Furioso",
at the open air with free admission.
It would not have gone from being an activity on the City's cultural menu, if it were not for the fact that the show, filmed and uploaded to social networks, consisted
of a singer and two other half-naked "artists" wiggling on the grass in the gardens and singing lyrics whose language ranged from vulgar to soft porn.
The song, based on what was seen and heard on the networks, said in a fragment: "What does poverty matter when you have p... very hard... What does poverty matter when you have a hungry tail...
What does it matter... when you go out looking mad in the streets, in the corners, for that bit of furious love that stuns you and makes you forget about poverty for a while”.
And in that musical tone the stupor of those present increased.
Regardless of whether or not the show offered by Opera Periférica has artistic value, it surprised users who were outraged because the “social value” that public institutions are supposed to consider when programming activities in a public museum
had not been taken into account.
.
In other words, does the performance of the controversy coincide with the values of Fernández Blanco, does it add value or does it put them into debate?
Or none of the three?
Given that the videos spread like wildfire, with good waist the Friends of the Museum Association -which makes great collection efforts for the preservation of the collection and the state of that institution- sent a statement that says: "Given the insistent demand for information On behalf of our partners, friends and neighbors, we believe it appropriate to clarify that the Association of Friends of the Isaac Fernández Blanco Hispanic-American Art Museum has not had any participation in the organization of the activity called 'Furious Baroque' and that it has been part of a call of the General Directorate of Heritage, Museums and Historical Center of the Ministry of Culture of Buenos Aires, called #sontusmuseos”.
The text adds, if necessary, that "the selected shows were programmed by the General Directorate of Heritage, Museums and Historic Center in the different museums of the City, our entity unaware of the selection criteria of the proposals, their contents, opportunity and place of programming for them.
We also want to make it known that what is expressed there does not coincide with the values and criteria of the Association”.
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By the way, it was not possible to speak with the director of the Fernández Blanco Museum, who would have little or nothing to say, since the programming came from another area of the
Ministry of Culture, led by Enrique Avogadro.
repercussions
In the middle of the afternoon, an official statement sent to
Clarín Cultura
from the Artistic Programming area of BA Museums expressed: "It is an opera performance specially made for the
Fernández Blanco Museum
, due to its baroque character and the use of instruments such as the lute, making reference to the collection of instruments that are exhibited there and was selected by federal call carried out in 2022 by the Artistic Programming area of BA Museums”.
The text stressed that "for the curatorship of this and all cultural artistic projects, the Artistic Programming area receives a folder that has the descriptive text, with photos, biography and artistic background of those who participate.
In all the material received, nowhere was there any reference to a scene like the one seen on Saturday.”
The posts of the artists.
Consulted by
Clarín Cultura
about the event, which received all kinds of repudiation and criticism, an unobjectionable source linked to associations of museum friends said: "Performative works must be extremely careful, because their content can be offensive to people who visit a museum, much more if you go with minors.
Even if there are people who don't care, a museum has to take into account that there is a public who does care.
Museum directors should have the power to admit and decide questions of this nature, which can be disturbing from a social point of view, regardless of whether or not it has artistic value.
There must be a judgment of social value”.
This that happened is not
an unfortunate event,
say several managers and spokespersons with whom
Clarín Cultura
spoke .
“This transcended because
it was something grotesque that had no quality
.
But it has been happening for a long time in the City's museums, because there are officials who have the
hubris
(arrogance) to think that museums can be programmed by running over traditions and the institutional culture of those spaces.
A video about what happened in the
Fernández Blanco
obscures the prestige accumulated over the years by that museum, which it also manages with a meager budget”.
Those consulted added that “from the Directorate of Museums of the City, which is in the area of the secretary Viviana Cantoni, it was decided to unify the way in which museums should be communicated to the public.
A team meets with the teams from each institution and tells them that museums have to be lighter, more fun.
The programming is always in the outdoor spaces of the institutions.
It happens both in Fernández Blanco and in the other dependents of Minister Avogadro.
The curious thing is that the contents that are programmed from another area are not submitted to the consideration of the directors or the curatorial or educational teams”.
The posts of the artists.
What has been said translates like this:
an area of the Buenos Aires government takes shows like the one on Saturday to the gardens of a museum, without taking into account the curatorial script of that museum.
The external space would become a location for the purposes of the show.
This "rush", as another source consulted called it, began two or three years ago with the idea of generating "more fun" activities.
Sometimes they are clear and pleasant.
Sometimes it is the embarrassment of last Saturday.
“This is an opportunity to deepen the reflection on public museums and the place they occupy in society”, they underlined.
For those who have not seen the performance of Opera Periférica, it has gone viral on social networks.
pc
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