Prominently located, architecturally distinct and with a long and controversial history behind its much anticipated opening (work on the Fortabat started in 2000, and intermitted during the financial crisis of 2001), the collection intervenes concretely into conceptualizations of the role of art in urban public life.
The space displays 230 works from the private collection of Amalia LaCroze de Fortabat, the grande dame of the Argentine art world. It was conceived of both as a contribution to the Argentine patrimonio nacional (national heritage) and as a mainstay of the international art circuit. That double identity has generated national debate across the major Argentine newspapers since before the collection opened. The Fortabat has garnered such attention because in Buenos Aires, unlike London or New York, no longstanding tradition exists of private collectors placing their collections on public display.
The Fortabat, designed by the internationally-renowned Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly, consists of a glass and steel building overlooking the water of Puerto Madero. The lower galleries are windowless, though spacious and well-lit. Natural light floods into the higher areas through a curved window that runs along the expansive length of the building, overlooking the port. The architecture glistens with metallic newness against the The collection intervenes concretely into conceptualizations of the role of art in urban public lifedistinctly brown-tinged water a few meters away. At first glance, and despite its location in a distinctly porteño cultural hub, this architectural design, all Spartan light and glass, appears to reveal scant sense of local identity. In reality, of course, the design is fiercely engaged with the contemporary cityscape, stylistically in sync with the glut of multi-nationals that now punctuate the horizon in close proximity to the museum.
This local and global orientation continues inside. Sections on ‘Countryside, City and Tradition’, ‘The Spirit of Modernity’, ‘Abstractions and New Forms of Figurations’ and ‘Figurations’ are devoted to Argentine painting, with works by Lino Enea Spilimbergo, Carlos Alonso, Xul Solar, Antonio Seguí and their Argentinean compatriots dominating. One room is devoted solely to the renowned Argentine figurative artist Antonio Berni. An ‘International Art’ area houses all non-Argentine work, while several non-Western objets d’art are situated, alone, on the second floor. The international collection is expansive, strong in painting from other countries in Latin America, the U.S. and Europe. Roberto Matta, Andy Warhol and Auguste Rodin have their works hung prominently, while J.M.W. Turner’s Juliet and Her Nurse (1836) is displayed as the apotheosis of the collection and often deified as such in media debate.
The curation of the Fortabat clearly eschews the integrationalist aims seen in other public art forums, such as the Latin American collection of the Blanton Museum, Texas, where thematic and chronological groupings have replaced strictly national organizing categories. In contrast, the divisional arrangement in the Fortabat - the national and international posited as separate pillars of the collection - highlights its strength in preserving the Argentine patrimonio nacional but sidelines the flows of artists, ideas, styles and movements across the borders.
The example of the Coleccion Fortabat opens up a set of questions about the idea of the 21st-century Latin American art collection. Do privately-owned art collections on public display across Latin America share features that distinguish them from collections elsewhere? Why, now more than ever before, have private collectors across the region decided to open their collections to a viewing public? And is there one fixed idea or set of ambitions and artistic orientations that unify contemporary art collections in Latin American?
Certain trends are observable. Many Latin American collectors invest, predominantly, in Latin American art, often with a slant towards their own nationality: The Colección Jumex in Mexico and Museo de arte latinoamericano de Buenos Aires are cases in point. This Despite the professed aim of many collectors to reinvent the urban environs in which their collections are displayed, most of their museums nonetheless charge an entry feelatter, home to the collection of the Argentine philanthropist Eduardo F. Constantini, has its pan-regional orientations embossed in its title. Most collections of Latin American art, unsurprisingly, are found in Latin America and the United States. The major auctions of Latin American art tend still to run out of the traditional twentieth-century centre for art sales - the New York headquarters of Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction houses - though regional ferias de arte are, increasingly, hotbeds for art sales too.
Several collections, like the Fortabat, seek to contribute to a regeneration of the area in which they are located. The new, architecturally notable Museo Soumaya, Mexico City, will house some of the private collection of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. One of the expressed aims of the project is to lead the ‘the regeneration of its urban zone’, creating a ‘new identity’ for the area, a former industrial zone bordering the now exclusive Polanco neighbourhood1. Despite the professed aim of many collectors to reinvent the urban environs in which their collections are displayed, most of their museums nonetheless charge an entry fee. However significant these museums may be, then, in raising the profile of the visual arts in the public life of Latin American cities, as with any fee-charging cultural institution, the ‘public’ who can view the art inside constitutes only a privileged minority; the moneyed locals and culturally-inclined tourists with sufficient pesos or reais to spare are the only public here.
If Latin American collectors have shared habits in their art enterprises, these are tendencies, not rules set in stone. Whatever patterns may be evident in regional art-collecting, the idea of the 21st-century Latin American art collection remains productively unfixed. Unfixed, because collecting has arisen out of the vision and interest of individuals, no single unified project behind them. Productively so, because that lack of fixity implies a refusal to become stagnated, contemporary art collection and display across Latin America driven instead by a multi-faceted and continuing cultural dynamism.
The collections perform, moreover, an important role on the global stage in their promotion of contemporary work produced by Latin American artists. Argentine cultural critic Néstor García Canclini has noted that Latin American cultural creativity is viewed, from outside, as a past phenomena2. These collections, both in their regional contemporary art orientation and in their globally avant-garde architectural designs, disable that inaccurate vision, positing Latin American cultural productivity at the very fore of the creative world.
1 http://www.soumaya.com.mx/navegar/anteriores/anteriores10.html. My translations.
2 Néstor García Canclini, http://kvc.minbuza.nl/uk/archive/commentary/canclini.html
