The Evolution of the Private Art Museum in Mexico
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The evolution of the private art museum in Mexico Rebecca Rose A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Art History and Philosophy University of Essex 30th September 2015 1 Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Professor Valerie Fraser for her support, wisdom and guidance throughout my research project. I would also like to thank the members of my supervisory boards, particularly Dr Michaela Giebelhausen, for their insightful comments over the years. I am grateful for the ESCALA collection, and its director Dr Joanna Harwood, for providing an inspiring resource during my time at Essex University. I would also like to thank the departmental administrative staff, particularly Myra Offord and Wendy Williams, for their patience and encouragement, and Sloman Librarian Christopher Anderton for helping to provide me with useful material for this thesis. I am indebted to Patricia Sloane for taking me under her wing when I visited Mexico and providing me with valuable information about the contemporary art scene. I also wish to thank Patrick Charpenel, Vanessa Bohórquez, Gonzalo Lebrija and José Noé Suro for meeting with me and kindly answering my questions. I would also like to thank Robert R. Janes, Carla Stellweg, James Oles, Rubén Gallo and Gregorio Luke for corresponding with me for the purpose of my research project. My thanks also go to Vanessa Arelle and Tessy Mustri, who kindly provided me with helpful contacts for my visit to Mexico. I would like to thank Professor Steven Boldy, Professor Melveena McKendrick, Georgina Adam and Caroline Niémant for inspiring me to pursue this research project. I would also like to express my gratitude to Miriam Metliss, Zanna Gilbert, Ian Dudley and Stuart Easterling for their kindness, time and ideas. Finally, to my parents for their love and support. 2 The evolution of the private art museum in Mexico Over the last thirty years there has been a proliferation in the number and diversity of privately- funded exhibition spaces for contemporary art in Mexico. Driving this development is a new generation of art collectors and my research project is concerned with how collector-led models of patronage have influenced the recognition, impact and public display of contemporary art in Mexico. My thesis begins by exploring what constitutes an art collection, the significance of a museum, and what motivates a collector. I then present an overview of the historical relationship between state and private art collections in Mexico, followed by a critique of landmark events in the genesis of the Mexican art market. In the second part of my research project I identify a group of influential mid-twentieth century collectors who established their own exhibition spaces in order to share their collections with the public, followed by an analysis of their legacy through the activity of the current generation of collectors, whose efforts to promote contemporary art within Mexico and abroad have spawned a new climate of creative enterprise and collaboration. This thesis seeks to present a survey of the evolution of the private exhibition space in Mexico by examining independent cultural initiatives whose ambition is to change the way the public engages with contemporary art. In my findings I examine how collectors’ objectives manifest a vision for the museum visitor experience and the impact of these privately-funded institutions on Mexico’s cultural identity. 3 Title: The evolution of the private art museum in Mexico: Collector-led enterprise and its impact on public engagement with contemporary art. Preface 4 Introduction 7 Part One: Mexico: A Cultural Topography (i) The Museum – the myriad purpose of the museum, visitor engagement strategies and significance for socio-cultural development 19 (ii) The Collector – collecting practice and issues of motivation, influence and identity. 35 (iii) Developmental Challenges – historical overview of public and private funding models in museums of contemporary art in Mexico; creative practice that has subverted conventional museum spaces. 52 (iii) Mexico and the Global Art Market – landmark events in the evolution of the art market in Mexico, examining the role of auctions, art fairs, galleries and identifying a network of advisors, curators, critics and historians. 77 Part Two: Building a Collection (i) Twentieth Century Art Collectors – Carrillo Gil – Dolores Olmedo – Jacques and Natasha Gelman – Rufino Tamayo; influencers: Fernando Gamboa – Miguel Covarrubias – Inés Amor. 115 (ii) The New Generation – Eugenio López Alonso – José Noé Suro – César Cervantes – Isobel and Agustín Coppel – Patrick Charpenel – Moisés Cosío – Sergio Autrey 152 Analysis and Findings 190 Select Bibliography 198 4 Preface Mexican visual culture has always been a source of great fascination to me and it was during my time working as an arts journalist (2006-2013) that I became particularly interested in what was happening in the world of contemporary art in Mexico. In 2002, Tate Modern appointed its first Associate Curator of Latin American Art, Mexican Cuauhtémoc Medina1, who coordinated the newly formed Laatin American Acquisitions Committee. Three years later, Tate Liverpool put on an exhibition designed to showcase contemporary Latin American art from the Tate Collection. Inverting the Map (15 October 2005 - 26 March 2006) was accompanied by a series of events and represented a new platform for Latin American art in Europe. This focus of attention on artists from the region extended to its galleries, curators and collectors, whose names started appearing both in print media or online when I read up on reports of art fairs and gallery openings. By gathering information from my experience working in the art world at the time, I began to find connections between these spheres of activity. A new energy appeared to be pushing the Mexican art scene into the pages of industry newspapers and magazines, and behind many of the headlines were not auction prices or ownership scandals but reports of new contemporary art foundations and museums funded by private collectors. This series of connections made me question how these developments would impact on the way contemporary art was experienced by the public in Mexico, a country with world-class archaeological museums and a total of thirty 32 UNESCO world heritage sites (the largest number of any country in the Americas) but with relatively low-profile contemporary art galleries. At the time, public museums dedicated to contemporary art were rare2, and it seemed clear to me that private patrons were eager to address this issue by creating their own foundations and art spaces. 1 Cuauhtémoc Medina (1965-) is a Mexican art historian, curator and critic. 2 Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) opened to the public in November 2008; previously the main publicly-funded space that exhibited contemporary art was Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Artes (MUCA), particularly under the directorship of Helen Escobedo (1934-2010) in the 1960s; Ex-Teresa Arte Alternativo in Mexico City, was founded in 1993. This exhibition space subsequently replaced the word ‘alternativo’ with ‘actual’, denoting a more inclusive approach that accepted contemporary art as a mainstream cultural medium. 5 My initial investigations were non-academic in nature but the findings were compelling enough for me to want to take my research further. As I explored the world of contemporary art in Mexico, through conversations with local arts professionals and a handful of ‘hobbyist’ collectors, the same set of questions kept cropping up: Why did certain collectors feel the need to build their own museums, and what were their ambitions for these new spaces? How would they determine their success? Would the permanent collection focus on Mexican or international artists? The next stage involved finding the right academic institution for my research project. Essex University was a clear choice for me for two reasons: I was aware that its Latin American Art History department had a reputation for excellence, and I was familiar with texts written by members of its faculty; I was also very inspired by ESCALA (then UECLAA), the University’s collection of Latin American modern and contemporary art. I submitted a thesis proposal to Professor Valerie Fraser with references from Professor Steven Boldy, who had supervised me throughout my BA at Cambridge University, and Professor Alexander García Düttmann, who supervised my MA dissertation at Goldsmiths. Essex University accepted my application, and that I was able to begin my research. The first book I found that touched on the issues relating to my topic was Collecting Latin American Art for the 21st Century, published by the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Edited by Mari Carmen Ramírez, this compilation of essays revealed a swell of academic engagement with the topic. Within its pages I read an essay by Mexico-based curator Olivier Debroise (1952-2008) that plotted the journey of Mexican cultural institutions over the last twenty years. The author describes his experience in late 2000 of a Gabriel Orozco retrospective at the Museo Rufino Tamayo shortly before visiting the Colección Jumex in its newly-opened gallery on an industrial plant in Ecatepec, 30km north of Mexico City. One sentence struck a chord with what I was encountering in my work as an art journalist: ‘The parallels and discrepancies between these two events indicated a profound conversion of the tastes, intentions and goals of private collectors in the last twenty years, which mirrored a transformation in the contemporary art scene’. I wanted to explore this theme within the parameters of an official research paper, to see where this surge of activity would lead and how it might 6 determine the way the public engages with contemporary art in Mexico. Debroise concludes his essay by surmising that the Colección Jumex ‘may very well become an international reference if [founder] López follows through with his plan to build another facility, with a library and archive, in a more central location in Mexico City’3.