By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 23 2001 (IPS)

The Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA) has been inaugurated in the Argentine capital with an exhibition that is a showcase of 300 works by noted painters from 10 countries in the region, among them some of the 20th century’s best.

In a building specially constructed to house the valuable pieces, the public can appreciate “Autorretrato con chango y loro” (Self- Portrait with Monkey and Parrot) by Mexico’s Frida Kahlo, and works by her husband Diego Rivera, the famed muralist, alongside paintings by Uruguayan Joaquín Torres García, Colombian Diego Botero, Brazilian Cándido Portinari and Argentine Xul Solar, among others.

The museum, which opened its doors in late September, holds a collection of artwork originating from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Eduardo Constantini, Argentine entrepreneur and owner of the museum, began collecting works of art in the 1970s. He built the new museum – at a cost of some 25 million dollars – to make them available for public viewing. The market value of the collection is believed to be at least twice the cost of the building.

“We do not want it to be an elitist museum. We would like it to have a social sensitivity,” Constantini said. The idea is to charge an accessible admission fee (four dollars), with free access for students, retirees and schoolteachers, with special visits organised for children from poor areas.

Meanwhile, the authorities of the city of Buenos Aires and of the tourism industry hope the new art institution will serve to attract a greater flow of visitors to a capital that already has numerous points of cultural interest. They hope to follow the example of the successful Guggenheim Museum that opened in Bilbao, Spain in 1997 in a unique building designed by US-born architect Frank O. Gehry.

But the project’s origins were marked by heated debate among the residents of the Palermo neighbourhood, where the museum is located. They protested that the city legislature had made exceptions to the municipal construction statutes, allowing the building to occupy more space than would otherwise have been permitted.

MALBA is housed in the only building in Buenos Aires that was built specifically as a museum. All other art museums have been installed in older buildings adapted for the purpose. Constantini’s plan involved an international contest to design the museum, which ultimately attracted submissions from 430 architectural studios.

The winning project came from a group of Argentine architects, who drew up plans for a building with three levels.

The illumination was designed by Italian architect Piero Castiglioni, the same artist who created the lighting for the Musée d’Orsay, set in an old railway station in Paris, and for the Palazzo Grazzi in Venice, Italy.

A modern aesthetic of simplicity sets MALBA apart from the numerous palatial mansions-turned-museums in Buenos Aires.

The main floor offers a variety of services, such as a restaurant and a bookstore, and a conference hall intended for giving seminars on various cultural aspects of the Latin American region.

It has been announced that such prominent writers as Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes and Chile’s Jorge Edwards are to lead some of the museum’s courses.

It is on the two upper levels where visitors can appreciate the museum’s first exhibition, “Art in Latin America,” which provides a comprehensive look at Latin American painting in the 20th century. The exhibition ends Nov 18.

The show covers works by Argentine artist Antonio Berni, Brazil’s Tasilio do Amaral and Mexico’s Kahlo, extending from a period in the early 20th century – one of autonomy with respect to “reality” – and to a more recent current, represented by Mexican muralists Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, among others.

The Constantini collection has been further enriched by some 100 artworks contributed by private collectors from several countries, some of which have never been publicly shown in Buenos Aires due to the lack of an appropriate space.

Art critic Fabián Legenblik, of Argentina, has said that the museum is “dazzling” and “a privilege for Buenos Aires.” But he points out that Constantini’s collection is “still in the growing phase” and thus requires the contributions of other collectors of Latin American art.

The New York Museum of Modern Art’s international programme director, Jay Levenson, said following the MALBA inauguration that the new museum in Buenos Aires is truly one of international calibre, both as far as infrastructure and the exhibited works. He predicted that art exchanges would take place between the two institutions in the near future.

For December, MALBA is slated to host an exhibition organised by the Valencia Institute of Modern Art, “Politics of Difference: Ibero- American Art at the End of the Century”. The museum’s agenda for 2002 includes retrospectives on the careers of US artist Roy Lichtenstein and on Brazil’s Lasar Segall.

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