Marcela Roberts
Conference Report. November 2023
During the intense days of the CIMAM Conference, especially in the first organized panel “How can museums take on social responsibility? A question from the Americas,” I had the opportunity to verify how situations or issues that we sometimes believe are specific to our context and reality also affect many communities and institutions. In each of the examples presented in this first panel (as well as in the subsequent days), the proposals of the participating professionals to address the needs of diverse communities from the museum perspective were discussed. This confronts us with the fact that the appropriation of the legacy present in cultures and the necessary social memory to apprehend it, as well as democratic access to its enjoyment, still constitute one of the greatest challenges towards which specific management actions and policies should be focused.
As a cultural manager, I currently work at an institution under the Ministry of Culture of the Nation, the Casa Nacional del Bicentenario. The CNB is a cultural center where, in addition to art exhibitions, cycles of music, theater, dance, and cinema, training clinics and workshops open to the community, talks, book presentations, and guided tours for schools and the general public take place. Also, within the CNB, the Centro de Arte Sonoro (CASo), a sound art center, operates, as the only one in the country dedicated to this discipline.
My particular interest in the CIMAM conference has been the activation of museums and cultural institutions in the territory, emphasizing the exchange with communities and their specific needs. I aim to achieve small but significant changes in people's perceptions and understanding of art, and the valuable contribution each person can make to community culture.
As part of the visitor's program, I had the pleasure of participating in the outing to “Las Yungas” communal garden in the vulnerable Rodrigo Bueno neighborhood. Maria Vilca welcomed us and showed how, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the community had to create a vegetable garden to produce their food, being isolated and lacking sufficient assistance from government authorities. The wonderful experience is now integrated into actions from the Museo Moderno to weave a network of participation and belonging from the community to the museum. Spaces blur, and the museum becomes present in neighborhood initiatives as an additional agent committed to transforming people towards a better quality of life, incorporating new fields of action linked to the real needs of the community.
During the panel organized on the first day of the conference, I highlight the presentation by Nicolás Testoni, Director of the Museo Ferrowhite in Bahía Blanca, on his museum's commitment to the space and territory it occupies. Although of a different type, Ferrowhite also created a garden space during the pandemic lockdown. The project/action originated from the museum itself and involved the community that was unable to meet physically at the time. The museum had planned to create a community garden, which, due to the pandemic and mandatory isolation, could not be realized. Thus, the idea of distributing seeds to homes emerged, and the community garden began to take shape in the 40 yards of the residents of Ingeniero White and Bahía Blanca, who enthusiastically joined in.
Understanding museums as spaces that act as cultural transmission sites in this sense, where the affective and relational take place and position themselves as an essential need to be cared for and given entity, is what moves and inspires me. The practices that concern us, seen from this dimension of constructing possibilities, encounters, collective construction, and participation, are enhanced in the exchange of professional experiences and give us momentum to continue despite the institutional difficulties we must face.
This is the contribution that the CIMAM 2023 Conference leaves in my professional experience, a meeting where the exchange of experiences is so crucial, in an affective and mutual support dimension, that is built only through fluid dialogue and physical presence. Beyond the individual and enriching presentations, I had the pleasure of witnessing, I believe it is the intention of united wills with a common goal that prevails and remains once the meeting is concluded.
Bio
Marcela Roberts is the General Coordinator at the Casa Nacional del Bicentenario, under the National Ministry of Culture. In this institution, I coordinate federal and local exhibition projects. I am in charge of the planning and direction of Visual Art projects, as well as public programs.