Reaching Across Distancing

Luis Camnitzer, Uruguayan artist and writer, New York.
Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, Director, Museo Nacional de Arte (MNA), La Paz.
Elvira Espejo Ayca, Director, Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore (MUSEF), La Paz.
Agustín Pérez Rubio, CIMAM Board Member and Curator, 11th Berlin Biennale, Berlín.

Moderated by Victoria Noorthoorn, CIMAM Board Member and Director, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires.

Statements:

If one can no longer go to museums as before, what's next? There is no public to justify the museum as a house of spectacles. This reveals how fragile this definition of museums has always been, how it helps to create an art bubble by now held together by a flimsy web of finance threat. And worst, how the exhibition industry doesn't help but is an obstacle to a good education. Luis Camnitzer
The main spoken languages in Bolivia don't have such a word as art. So having museums in a country that has thirty-six official languages, what does art mean? First of all, the raison d'être of art should be to contribute to the unconditional equality of everyone and to everyone's non-negotiable right to life indifference. Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz
Because museums are placed in urban areas, it is crucial to see how we approach them from a city perspective, as many of these collections, from an archeological and ethnographical point of view, come from communities. We created a program to visit the communities with a portable museum so people can get to know who we are and how we are. Elvira Espejo Ayca
Museums are creators of a symbolic capital that can help in the idea of visibility, understanding, and awareness, but with this pandemic, the situation becomes more urgent because it has polarized the vulnerable. So what kind of institutions are we building? What are the discourses museums are giving now that we face lots of injustice within the art workers' world? Agustín Pérez Rubio

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