Aesthetic Artefacts or Documents? Museums of Art and History in Late Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires
2016; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Espanhol
10.1080/19369816.2015.1118260
ISSN1936-9824
Autores Tópico(s)History and Politics in Latin America
ResumoAbstractArgentina's National Museum of History and the National Museum of Fine Arts were created almost at the same time in Buenos Aires, towards the end of the nineteenth century. Many of the artefacts collected in both museums are of the same kind: oil paintings, drawings, engravings, and sculptures, depicting battles, portraits, landscapes, and costumbrista scenes. However, the artefacts in each institution were understood differently: those in the Museum of Fine Arts were considered as ‘art’, while those in the other museum were seen as historical documents. This differentiation between the material of art history and that of history deserves critical examination. The creation of each museum may explain this distinction, as well as offering a point of departure for further reflections about the way in which those artefacts have been exhibited, studied, and preserved.KEYWORDS: museumsarthistoryvisual artefactsBuenos Aires AcknowledgementsIn memoriam — José Antonio Pérez Gollán, former Director of the National Museum of History, who generously gave me help and advice. A preliminary version of this article was published in Spanish in Américo Castilla, ed., El museo en escena. Política y cultura en América latina (Buenos Aires: Paidós–Fundación TyPA, 2010), pp. 71–88. My research for this article benefited from the generous aid of Miguel Ruffo, Viviana Isola, Sofía Oguic, Vilma Pérez Casalet, Diego Alberto Ruiz, and Ezequiel Canavero, all of them members of the professional team of the National Museum of History in Argentina.Notes1 L. Malosetti Costa, ‘Arte e Historia en los festejos del Centenario de la Revolución de Mayo en Buenos Aires’, Historia Mexicana, lx.1 (2010), 439–71.2 M. I. Baldasarre, Los dueños del arte (Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2006); J. Andermann and B. González Stephan, eds, Galerías del progreso (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo editora, 2006); M. E. Blasco, ‘Comerciantes, coleccionistas e historiadores en el proceso de gestación y funcionamiento del Museo Histórico Nacional’, Entrepasados, 36–37 (2011), 93–111; C. Carman, Los orígenes del Museo Histórico Nacional (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2013).3 D. Preziosi, ‘Art as History’, The Art of Art History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 21–30.4 R. Amigo, La armas de la pintura. La Nación en construcción (1852–1870) (Buenos Aires: Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2008).5 C. Duncan, Civilizing Rituals. Inside Public Art Museums (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).6 Note of 1 September 1890 to the president of the National Education Council, Dr Benjamín Zorrilla, National History Museum Archive (NHMA), Libro de Notas I (LN I), ff. 38–39.7 E. Quesada, El Museo Histórico Nacional y su importancia — con motivo de la inauguración del nuevo local en el Parque Lezama (Buenos Aires: Kraft, 1897), p. 6.8 Quesada, El Museo, p. 22.9 See José Rilla, ‘Historias en segundo grado. Pierre Nora y los lugares de la memoria’, Pierre Nora en Les lieux de mémoire (Montevideo: Trilce, 2008), pp. 5–9.10 See I. Podgorny and M. M. Lopes, El museo en un vitrina. Museos e Historia Natural en la Argentina (México: Limusa, 2008). See also LN I and Libro de Recepción de Banderas y Objetos (NHMA), passim.11 A. González Garaño and A. Apraiz, Museo Histórico Nacional (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de la Universidad, 1944), p. 15.12 For an analysis of Mitres’ texts and its meaning in the historiography of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and also for a comparative study of the successive editions of his Historia de Belgrano, first published in 1857, and of his Historia de San Martín (1st edn 1887), ed. by T. Halperín Donghi, ‘La historiografía: treinta años en busca de un rumbo’, in La Argentina del ochenta al centenario, ed. by G. Ferrari and E. Gallo (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1980), pp. 829–40. Mitre's controversy with Vicente Fidel Lopez on 1881 and 1882, including a ‘scientific’ history supported by documentary evidence and a ‘philosophical’ model, was analysed by Alejandro Eujanian in ‘El surgimiento de la crítica’, A. Cataruzza and A. Eujanian, Políticas de la historia. Argentina 1860–1960 (Buenos Aires: Alianza, 2003), pp. 17–41.13 L. A. Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas. La construcción de la nacionalidad argentina a fines del siglo XIX (Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001).14 O. Terán, Vida intelectual en el Buenos Aires fin-de-siglo (1880–1910). Derivas de la ‘cultura científica’ (Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000).15 Bertoni, Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas, pp. 89–95.16 Podgorny, El desierto, pp. 11–18.17 Lawyer and historian, nephew of one of the leading scholars of historical objects collectors (Angel Justiniano Carranza) and director since 1886 of the Revista Nacional.18 LN I 1890 (NHMA), ff. 10–11.19 The first two catalogues of the MHN were published in 1890. From then on until 1899 the Museum published annually a new catalogue of the collections. Those catalogues were small and of low cost, thousands of them were distributed freely to the visitors. See D. Ruiz, ‘Las publicaciones del Museo Histórico Nacional. Reseña y bibliografía analítica’, Museo Histórico Nacional, 2ª época, año 7, nº 4 (2004), 190–91.20 LN I (NHMA), f. 10.21 Cf. Correspondence in Libro de Documentos de Donaciones II (LDD II) 1906–1908 (NHMA).22 Cf. ‘Recibo de Deposito’ No 25 (LDD I), f. 13, and LN I, f. 34 (NMHA).23 Fermina F. de Díaz (granddaughter of Hipólito Bouchard) wrote to Carranza: ‘Everything that belonged to my grandfather exists in Peru. The only thing we keep in memory of him is the picture. If you want we can let you get a copy of it’ [‘Todo lo que perteneció a mi abuelo existe en el Perú. Lo único que como recuerdo de él conservamos es el retrato que si Ud. Quiere lo podemos ceder para que saquen una copia de él’], LDD I, f. 12 (NMHA).24 L. Malosetti Costa, ‘¿Verdad o belleza? Pintura, fotografía, memoria, historia’ Crítica Cultural, 4.2 (2009), 111–23.25 L. Malosetti Costa, ‘Los retratos de Gil de Castro como reliquias históricas’, in José Gil de Castro. Pintor de Libertadores, ed. by N. Majluf (Lima: MALI, 2014), pp. 74–78.26 M. I. Rodríguez Aguilar and M. J. Ruffo, ‘Entre originales y copias: el caso del Museo Histórico Nacional’, Original-copia … original? III Congreso Internacional de Teoría e Historia de las Artes (Buenos Aires: CAIA, 2005), pp. 91–102.27 R. Amigo, ‘Un contrato del pintor José Bouchet’, Estudios e investigaciones, 5 (1994), 113–16.28 P. Buchbinder, Los Quesada. Letras, ciencias y política en la Argentina 1850–1934 (Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2012).29 E. Quesada, Las reliquias de San Martín. Estudios de las colecciones del Museo Histórico Nacional (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Europea de M. A. Rosas, 1901), pp. 14–24.30 A. M. Telesca and M. Dujovne, ‘Museos, salones y panoramas. La formación de espacios de representación en el Buenos Aires del siglo XIX’, Arte y espacio. XIX Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte (México: UNAM, 1996), pp. 423–42; Baldasarre, Los dueños del arte; L. Malosetti Costa, Los primeros modernos. Arte y sociedad en Buenos Aires a fines del siglo XIX (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001).31 A. M. Telesca and J. E. Burucúa, ‘Schiaffino, corresponsal de El Diario en Europa (1884–1885). La lucha por la modernidad en la palabra y en la imagen’, Anales del Instituto de Arte Americano e Investigaciones Estéticas ‘Mario Buschiazzo’, 27–28 (Buenos Aires: FADU, UBA, 1989–1991).32 Malosetti Costa, Los Primeros Modernos, pp. 39–57.33 ‘Movimiento literario–Ateneo Argentino’, La Nación, 24 July 1892, p. 1, col. 8.34 E. Quesada, ‘El primer “salon” argentino’. Immediately republished in a book later that year: Reseñas y críticas (Buenos Aires: Lajouane, 1893), pp. 373–406.35 Baldasarre, Los dueños del arte.36 P. Melgarejo, ‘Eduardo Schiaffino curador: la exposición Adquisiciones de 1906’, Segundas Jornadas sobre exposiciones de arte argentino y latinoamericano. Curaduría, diseño y políticas culturales (Córdoba, 2009).37 O. Terán, Vida intelectual en el Buenos Aires fin-de-siglo (1880–1910) Derivas de la ‘cultura científica’ (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000), pp. 207–87.38 Quesada, El Museo, pp. 24–25.39 Quesada, El Museo, p. 24.40 Quesada, El Museo, passim. The text released in the public sphere was also a guide for amateurs, for the new art public that had first appeared in 1893 in the Ateneo's salons, to which he was invited to give a critical assessment of the homeland's ‘treasures’, which were gathered in the MHN in appalling confusion.41 Document dated ‘at the beginning of November 1898’ [a principios de noviembre de 1898], Archivo Carranza (NMHA).42 Quesada, Las reliquias.43 Quesada, Las reliquias, p. 102.44 L. Malosetti Costa, ‘La imagen de San Martin y los historiadores’, José Gil de Castro. Pintor de Libertadores, ed. by N. Majluf (Lima: MALI, 2014), pp. 78–85.
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