National Identity and Coloniality of Knowledge in the Exhibition 3500 Years of Colombian Art (1960)
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♯11 second semester 2017: 201-208 ISSN 2313-9242 Nadia Moreno Moya UNAM, México National Identity and Coloniality of Knowledge in the Exhibition 3500 Years of Colombian Art (1960) National Identity and Coloniality of Knowledge... / Nadia Moreno Moya ♯11 second semester 2017: 201-208 that had gripped Colombia in the fifties, and to put an end to a military regime that, according to its crafters, had caused what they saw as the debacle of its “democratic tradition” (Fig. 2).5 National Identity and Coloniality of Knowledge in the Exhibition 3500 Years of Colombian Art (1960) Nadia Moreno Moya UNAM, México In March 1959, International Petroleum Company (Intercol), with headquarters in Bogotá, joined forces with the University of Miami to begin work on a “retrospective exhibition of Colombian art”1 that would include Fig. 1. Cover of the exhibition’s press dossier. Courtesy: Lowe Art works from the “pre-Columbian”, “colonial”, Museum, University of Miami. and “contemporary” periods in the framework of the festivities, in 1960, of one hundred and fifty years of Colombian independence. From For art historian Florencia Bazzano-Nelson, the beginning, Intercol had engaged in 3500 Years of Colombian Art is a shining dialogues with different institutions and example of Cold War cultural diplomacy. It was collections in Colombia about the idea of conceived strategically to coincide with holding the show at that university's Joe and Colombian President Alberto Lleras Camargo’s Emily Lowe Gallery2 in Coral Gables, where one tour of the United States at a delicate juncture in of Standard Oil Group's largest industrial the countries’ respective political and economic complexes was located (Intercol belonged to agendas: on the one hand, the Colombian Standard Oil) (Fig. 1).3 government wanted at all cost to consolidate a positive image of the country abroad and to By early 1960, what had begun as a receive the economic benefits of “Operation Pan “retrospective exhibition” was a solid “outreach America”;6 on the other, the government of the campaign for Colombian culture abroad”4 in United States wanted Colombia to continue to keeping with the nationalist spirit that be a staunch ally in the hemisphere as it fought accompanied the republic’s “rebirth” with the Communism in Latin America.7 In addition to advent of the Frente Nacional administration that complex weave of interests, Intercol –which (1958-1974). A political pact between the elites was becoming a leader in the exploitation and of the country’s two traditional parties –the distribution of oil, as well as the production of Conservative Party and the Liberal Party– the oil byproducts– had its own agenda. Frente Nacional was an attempt to symbolically overcome the political and partisan violence National Identity and Coloniality of Knowledge... / Nadia Moreno Moya 201 ♯11 second semester 2017: 201-208 Fig. 2. Page of the exhibition’s press dossier. Courtesy: Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami. While 3500 Years of Colombian Art was useful Colombian Art, rather, as a device for the to those interests, I believe it is indispensable to production of cultural discourse in the consider the exhibition from an analytic geopolitical fabric of the Cold War, a number of perspective that sees it not merely as a product questions arise (why it was held where it was of Cold War political and economic agendas. In held; how it took shape and was communicated; other words, it cannot be envisioned as one and others), questions that evidence the more act of cultural diplomacy in the twentieth operations of coloniality of knowledge at stake century. If we understand 3500 Years of in that attempt to represent “national art”. National Identity and Coloniality of Knowledge... / Nadia Moreno Moya 202 ♯11 second semester 2017: 201-208 An Exhibition for Viewers in the United As a number of thinkers and academics from the States Modernity/Coloniality Group have put it, modernity is not just a political and economic As I suggested at the beginning of this text, the process, but also a question of epistemic and exhibition 3500 Years of Colombian Art was, cultural hegemony that permeates every area of from its inception, part of a campaign to life in a number of different forms, among them promote a new image of Colombia. Intercol forms of knowledge.8 Modernity as Western asked Robert Willson, a visual artist and the project would not have been possible without director of the University of Miami’s Art School coloniality, its underside, which means that it (he was named to that post by the Joe and Emily always invents otherness. The power of the Lowe Gallery), to join artist Enrique Grau as coloniality of knowledge rests on the “center” Intercol’s adviser on a number of cultural ceasing to be a specific place on the planet to initiatives, among them this show. become instead a regime of discourse and of experience that is reproduced on the basis of Robert Willson arrived in Colombia in January othernesses, a regime that comes to be seen as 1960. He traveled to a number of regions and universal and true. cities to select works from private collections. While his trip enjoyed the support of a number One materialization of the coloniality of of individuals and public institutions –the knowledge is precisely the “universal” vision of Museo de Arte Colonial, the Museo Nacional de history associated with the idea of progress Colombia, the Universidad del Cauca, and pursuant to which some localized experiences others–it is not clear if there was an advisory and the processes of some peoples, cultures, and board that oversaw the selection of works for the continents are held over others. Coloniality of show.11 The over seventy articles in publications, knowledge affects bodies and imaginaries, ways among them cultural journals, that circulated in of thinking and of doing; it is modernity as Colombia and the region on the preparation for regime of epistemic violence.9 the show evidence that the mass media carefully followed Professor Willson’s tour of Colombia.12 In the coming lines, I will argue that 3500 Years From his visit to the archeological zone of San of Colombian Art was a device for the Agustín to readying the works’ shipment and reproduction of the coloniality of knowledge. their subsequent arrival in the United States, This analytic approach should not be mistaken the coverage put together a narrative of the for the “cultural colonialism” category, which show’s preparation as if it were a major feat conceives of the effects of colonial power as (Fig. 3). patent transformations in “national” symbolic productions by an outside imperial cultural. The character of Willson was useful to What I set out to explain is how, in its articulating a discourse that envisioned this conception and production, the exhibition exhibition as an undertaking necessary to show reproduced in both Colombia and in the Unites the world that Colombia had had a solid culture States the yearning for “universal” validation of since pre-Hispanic times. Both the journalistic “Colombian art” as a narrative of historical narrative and the photographs represent the continuity that spans from the pre-Hispanic professor from the United States as a character past into the present, in this case the mid- akin to the figure of the nineteenth-century twentieth century. That yearning is one of the explorer in search of archeological treasures in effects of the Eurocentric vision of culture, for an updated version of the colonial imaginary of which abstract universality is the same as the the white man that “discovers” other cultures concrete worldliness under the hegemony of and civilizations: Western modernity.10 Here, the United States as new center of political and economic power in Expectation dominates favorably the the Western world reproduces that hegemony cultural media in the United States. while also producing its othernesses. Drawn by the appeal of the unknown, famous art critics, intellectuals, and players in the world of culture will come to Miami”, explained Professor Willson. “They will reach a verdict on the grounds of a first impression that will National Identity and Coloniality of Knowledge... / Nadia Moreno Moya 203 ♯11 second semester 2017: 201-208 provide a just an overview of the Colombia’s ‘historical character.’” […] The exhibition featured forty-six objects from [Willson] confirmed the existence of a the colonial period, outstanding among them “great and vital artistic movement in religious paintings by Gregorio Vásquez Arce y the pre-Hispanic and colonial eras, as Ceballos (1638-1711), Antonio Acero de la Cruz well as in contemporary period, one little known –if known at all– outside of (c. 1600-1647) and Gaspar de Figueroa (c. 1594- 14 Colombia”.13 1658). According to the handout that accompanied the exhibition, it included some The exhibition finally opened on March 12, works by nineteenth-century painters (the 1960. Though there are not many photographs Figueroa brothers ((José Celestino (?-1870) and of it, the large number of articles published in José Miguel (?-1874)) and José María Espinosa both Colombia and the United States shed light (1796-1883)) categorized by Colombian art on some details of the show’s museographic history as artists from the early post- design and curatorial proposal. The exhibition independence period, but placed in the contained some three hundred and sixty works, “Colonial Art” section of the exhibition overwhelmingly Indo-American pieces in alongside religious paintings from New Grenada ceramic and precious metals produced by over and objects of religious and domestic use. The ten different indigenous groups. only artist featured as a representative of nineteenth-century Colombian art was Andrés de Santamaría (1860-1945) –an artist interested in Impressionism active in Europe and Colombia–, despite the fact that some of the works of his authorship included were produced in the early twentieth century.15 The “contemporary” section housed in a second gallery that also served as a conference room consisted of sixty works.