Five hundred works, a hundred artists: the MAMBA is back

The feeling among the participants is almost euphoric. The demonstration could be symptomatic: the expectation was such that now, when the reopening of the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (MAMBA) formally takes shape, there is an illusion. The sample that inaugurates this new stage could be many. This is "History of Two Worlds: Experimental Latin American Art in Dialogue with the MMK Collection, 1944-1989", visited by an audience of gallerists, specialists in the field, artists and, and any number of people interested in the # 39; s. Because this Thursday, July 12, 2018, there are a lot of people celebrating art, space, reopening, one or more artists. Celebrate

We must not forget that this institution was born without its headquarters. It was in 1956, a year when the later space of the Municipal General Theater of San Martn was not yet built. Ah must be the MAMBA. But ah, a building was not even finished. The phrase of its first director, Rafael Squirru, is legendary when he was asked about the museum: The Muse is me (The museum is me). The media defines it as a ghost museum. This uncertainty, this role, makes that Javier Villa, chief curator of MAMBA, feels and describes this day as the formal opening that the Museum did not have at first. And now it has 11 thousand square meters available and its reopening required that the traffic police be outside the headquarters to avoid affecting the traffic of cars.

It is Villa that explains to The Intransigent that the conceptualization and healing of "Stories of the Two Worlds" is a work of more than two years, in connection with the Kulturstiftung of the Bundes ( German Federacin Culture Foundation) which promotes the globalization of the collections of German museums. Thus, with part of the legacy of the Museum of Modern Kunst Frankfurt (MMK) and that of MAMBA, there is an exhibition of about 500 works and 100 artists from Latin America, United States and Europe. Consulted on what was most complex when healing a sample of this dimension, Villa as the search for a harmony, a dialogue between artists with different tasks but linked by research, little or supports, was one of the most important aspects. complex.

The specialist explains that a part of the sample includes works that, in the European case, arise between wars and details with respect to the art in America: At that time it was n & # 39; It was not possible to travel to Europe because it was between war and post war. begins to give this contemporary art where he begins to disbademble modern painting, we begin to work with an articulated sculpture, with a painting with a cut-out frame, among other variations. Is this a sample that only the specialized eye can appreciate? Villa thinks that the viewer who does not have the habit of seeing art has the habit of seeing it from a political place, which can promote reading and l & # 39; 39; interpretation of the dialogues between Latin America, Europe and the United States present. There will be times when the viewer will find a link, contrasts, fights, conflicts between the ways of understanding the world from each geographical perspective.

As the MAMBA reopened, with a global scale sample distributed across huge corridors and spacious halls; a public space that, in Villa's words, must be defended to the letter. The call was so broad that it is possible that these mentioned discussions may not be heard fully by those who attended this day. But it is permissible to think that what has been seen arouses more than curiosity, that they will come back because a well-known artistic space has been revived in Buenos Aires. Then, when there is silence in the room, the works will speak clearly.