♯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 (1960)

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that had gripped 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 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 ’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

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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”.

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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 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- 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

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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. The contemporary works were divided into two sections: the “Group of Pioneers” that included paintings by artists in the Indianist movement, figures active in the thirties like Luis Alberto Acuña (1904-

1994), Marco Ospina (1912-1995), Ignacio Fig. 3. Robert Willson (left) and Enrique Grau (right). Gómez Jaramillo (1910-1970), Pedro Nel Gómez Photography in the article “How the exhibition is made”, Cromos (1899- 1984), Gonzalo Ariza (1912-1995) and (Special issue 3.500 años de arte colombiano), March 7, 1960. Photography: Guillermo Angulo. Alipio Jaramillo (1913-1999). The “Contemporary Generation”, the second group, included paintings by Alejandro Obregón (1920- 1992), Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar (1922- All of those pieces were placed in the “Pre- 2004), Fernando Botero (1932-), Lucy Tejada Hispanic Art” section without differentiating (1920-2011), Judith Márquez (1925-1994), between ethnic groups. The ceramic works were Cecilia Porras (1925-1994), Antonio Roda (1921- placed at the center of the first gallery, whose 2003), Armando Villegas (1926-2013), layout was designed to have a tropical feel: some Guillermo Wiedemann (1926-2013) y Héctor of the pieces were placed in sand, others on low Rojas Herazo (1920-2002); and sculptures by pedestal; they were grouped according to Edgar Negret (1920-2012), Alberto Arboleda material and surrounded by vegetation. The (1925-2011) y Otto Sabogal (1935-). overall effect was somewhere between a notion of “the exotic” and a crafts market. The works in The decision to focus primarily on two periods, precious metal, on the other hand, were placed the pre-Hispanic era and the contemporary era, against black background in a display case in and to pay little attention to colonial works or order to highlight their formal qualities and the works from the nineteenth century was by no brightness of the . Clearly, those works were means innocent. 3500 Years of Colombian Art considered more valuable in economic, cultural, proposed a connection between modern forms and artistic terms than the ceramic pieces. of art and the pre-Hispanic past, brushing over

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♯11 second semester 2017: 201-208 production from the colonial and post- The National Heritage as Special Edition independence periods which were deemed unremarkable in the history of “national art”. Finally, the way the historical narrative of the exhibition circulated in Colombia furthered a This is evidenced as well by a number of articles colonial knowledge/power relation that went in the North American press. Some reviewers beyond exotization and the myth of the progress remarked that the paintings by the Figueroa of “national art” produced in the exhibition at brothers were largely unappealing because the Joe and Emily Lowe Gallery. Whereas the lacking in academic virtuosity as defined by original objects were to be viewed by an European historical painting; paintings from the audience in the United States, all the Colombian colonial period, on the other hand, were deemed viewership was left with was the experience of a original in relation to the legacy of the Spanish written narrative and a set of photographs of the . In other words, the audience and works featured (Fig. 4). reviewers envisioned the discourse of history as a tale of progress. At the same time, “Colombian Furthermore, most of the works in the show art” had, on the one hand, to meet the standards were not known in the Colombian context since of the European canon in execution and they belonged to private collections, and access material treatment and, on the other, to bear the to archeological patrimonies in Colombia was, distinctive markings of an identity of otherness even in 1960, largely a privilege. It was not until in relation to the “universal” canon. 1959, for instance, that the collections of the Banco de la República’s Museo del Oro were Coloniality of knowledge was at play in those open to the public, albeit with significant assessments and in journalists’ remarks on the restrictions.17 Since the beginning of the pre-Hispanic section of the show, which looked century, large sectors of the population had run to the imaginaries of and the search into obstacles when it came to appropriating the for gold in to underscore the country’s archeological and artistic patrimony; a value of the works in precious metals. The show designed as an operation to position contemporary works were also subject to a Colombia as a “trade mark” outside the vision that, while recognizing the affinity of country’s territory seemed like more of the those works with current “international” trends, same. produced a distinct “South American” other that could be typified. A journalist for The New York The magazines Cromos, Lámpara, and Semana Times, for instance, remarked that “While they published special editions with full-color bear the influence of Mexican painting and photographs of some of the works in the sculpture, the modern paintings and sculptures exhibition.18 These publications, which were in the exhibition are definitely Colombian in educational in intent, did not strictly adhere to theme. That is obvious not only in the paintings the curatorial vision of the show at the Lowe of peasant types, but also in the representation Gallery. The texts by specialists in archeology in of the in abstract parables”.16 Arte colombiano, the special issue published by Lámpara, underscored the diversity of the Crucial to this exhibition were the ethnic groups that inhabited the national accompanying actions that encouraged North territory before the advent of the Spanish, Americans to visit Colombia, a new tourist whereas the show’s museography overlooked destination. A chain of department stores the differences in the material cultures of the presented shows of photographs of Bogotá that ethnic groups for the sake of a formalist highlighted the city’s modern architecture and perspective that valued the pieces as “art”. its places of historical interest. The Empresa Colombiana de Turismo published booklets on The coordinator of that special issue was art Colombia with texts in English that, through critic Marta Traba (c. 1923-1983), who also Intercol, were handed out in public schools in wrote the introduction. The issue included as Miami. Indeed, Intercol was awarded the Cruz well essays by Luis Duque Gómez, G. Reichel- de Boyacá prize by President Alberto Lleras Dolmatoff, and Gregorio Hernández de Alba, Camargo for its efforts to promote Colombian figures well known in the field of ethnography culture. and archeology; a text on colonial art by artist Luis Alberto Acuña, director of the Museo de

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Arte Colonial at the time; and a second text by Colombian artistic milieu. [...] The rest Traba on contemporary art. is contemporary history. Europe came rushing into the Colombian scene not as any one nation or school, but as an international language of painting that she herself created in the twentieth century.19

That paragraph reveals that, for Traba, Colombian modern art in the twentieth century is worthy of being exhibited as “national art” thanks, at least to some extent, to its ability to usher into the country an “international language”–that is, the legacy of the European avant-gardes. Later in the text, Traba states that Colombian culture is in a “state of formation”,20 though that does not mean that it should be “excluded from international competition”21 since that is how it will be able to go beyond provincial frames of reference.

While Traba affirmed that, after the Spanish arrived in the Americas, indigenous expressions had disappeared entirely, Luis Alberto Acuña, author of the text on the colonial section, defended the American baroque as mestiza production where Spanish baroque iconography met indigenous elements. From the paragraph cited above, it seems that Traba agreed with the North American reviewers of the show: Colombian colonial art and art from the

Fig. 4. Cover Special issue 3.500 años de arte colombiano, nineteenth century did not merit entry into the Cromos, March 7,1960. Photography: Guillermo Angulo. “international” sphere.

The longing to be validated by that great Despite the array of voices, this edition did not narrative while also attempting to design a manage to escape the discourse of progress in unique “national” art” is a paradox of the art or of the superiority of the “universal” or the coloniality of knowledge that lies in Traba’s “international” over the local. In her opinion. Regarding the work of artist Eduardo introduction, Traba grants herself the authority Ramírez Villamizar, she writes in that same text to analyze the three historical periods covered that “[his] painting partakes of formal pursuits by the exhibition, calling –in the section below– that, in their attempt to venture into a pure and the contemporary scene in Colombia a moment ascetic zone, do away with not only personal “superior” to the past: passion, but also with any feeling that might upset the universal validity of art”,22 In an The eighteenth and nineteenth article published in the special issue of Semana, centuries in Colombia –like in most of though, she says that “[Ramírez Latin America– are a vast graveyard of Villamizar] ushers in abstract painting in dull images whose value is strictly documentary [...]. The twentieth Colombia whose international character does century got off to a good start: its first not require foregoing the use of colors that decades saw Andrés de Santa María, a could be considered part and parcel of the direct post-Impressionist painter educated and violent light that bathes the Colombian and trained in Europe who, thanks to a landscape”.23 bold use of color and dynamism, can be called a great painter, one who stands Those two remarks evidence the tension arising apart from the timid and prudish from the attempt to justify the uniqueness of the

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♯11 second semester 2017: 201-208 work of a Colombian artist on the basis of criticism of the exhibition voiced by reviewers in qualities of the national territory –“the direct the North American press –a strategy deployed and violent light that bathes the […] in the Colombian media as well in reference to landscape”– and argument that his work is fully the preparation of the show. The coloniality of enmeshed in art’s “international” and knowledge, then, informed visions in both “universal” language regardless of those places in order to justify and to valorize particularities. That paradox is part of the Colombian art on the basis of supposedly complex interplay of legitimation of Colombian “international” parameters. art from the hegemonic perspective: it can participate in the world, but on the basis of its That same discourse of “international” otherness. validation meant that 3500 Years of Colombian Art did not provide public access to the country’s patrimony within Colombia’s territory. By Way of Conclusion Indeed, the most violent facet of the operations of the colonality of knowledge enacted in this The exhibition 3500 Years of Colombian Art exhibition may well have been turning was not only designed as cultural diplomatic Colombia’s cultural and artistic heritage into a strategy akin to the interests of the governments tactic in a campaign to position that country, to of Colombia and the United States in the context improve its image abroad while denying access of the Cold War in the early sixties, but also a to that heritage on the part of the communities device that reproduced the coloniality of directly engaged in its re-signification and knowledge in its conception and materialization, memory. and in the historical narrative it constructed on the development of Colombian art.

The exhibition was specifically designed for Translated by Jane Brodie North American viewers, and its promoters backed the idea that it would provide national artwork with “international” validation. “Universal” art history understood as a Eurocentric discourse of cultural progress through its art forms determined the expectations surrounding the event. The narrative of cultural “progress” characteristic of that discourse and its persistent production of exoticisms dominated the

Notes

1 Letter n° RP-112, Folder “Exposición Intercol 1960”, 4 Letter n° 582, December 1, 1961, Folder “Intercol 1960”, Museo del Oro Archive, Banco de la República, Bogotá. Museo del Oro Archive, Banco de la República. 2 While the origins of the Joe and Emily Lowe Gallery date 5 While the government of General back to 1950, it opened as a museum in 1952. It was the (in power from 1953 to 1957) and the military junta that first museum in southern Florida with collections of followed it (1957-1958) are the only dictatorships in the Baroque, , Asian, and Native American art. It in a strict sense, formal democracy in is now the Lowe Art Museum in Miami. the country has been riddled with repression and violence –and the Frente Nacional was no exception. It was a 3 The Standard Oil Group, which belongs to the Rockefeller politically closed pact that did not include forces outside family, has historically been one of the corporate groups the two major parties and engaged in repression of social that exercises most influence on international and US movements, unions, and the civilian population. See politics. Pursuant to the purchase of Concesión de Mares in 1914, it became the largest oil company in Colombia. In Francisco Gutiérrez, El orangután con sacoleva. Cien años de democracia y represión en Colombia (1910-2010), Colombia in the fifties and sixties, Standard Oil operated Bogotá, IEPRI, Debate, 2014, 118-166. through Intercol, Esso Colombiana, and Andian Petroleum. 6 “Operation Pan America” was the initial name of what would later be known as the “Alliance for Progress”.

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7 Florencia Bazzano-Nelson, “Cold War Pan-American Group. It was launched in 1951 as a corporate newsletter, Operating: oil, coffee and 3500 Years of Colombian Art", but in the mid-fifties it gained legitimacy as a cultural Hispanic research, vol.12, n° 5, (October 1, 2011), pp. 438- magazine.

466. It is important to remember that the exhibition was 19 held the year after the Cuban Revolution. Relations Ídem., n/p between the United States and Cuba started to destabilize 20 Ídem in 1960 with the growing alliance between Cuba and the Soviet Union. October 1962 witnessed what is known as 21 Ídem the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the end to all ties 22 Marta Traba, “Artes plásticas contemporáneas”, in Arte between the two countries and the expulsion of Cuba from colombiano [special edition Lámpara], Bogotá, Semana the OAS. Ltda., c. 1960, n/p 8 I am referring to authors like Arturo Escobar in his 23 Marta Traba, “El arte colombiano a través de la historia”, “Mundos y conocimientos de otro modo. El programa de Semana [special section], Bogotá, 1960, n/p. investigación modernidad/colonialidad latinoamericano”, Tabula Rasa, n°1, Bogotá, (January–December 2003), pp. 51- 86; Catherine Walsh, Schiwy Freya, and Santiago Castro-Gómez (ed.) in their Indisciplinar las ciencias How to correctly cite this article? sociales: Geopolíticas del conocimiento y colonialidad del poder. Perspectivas desde lo andino, Quito, Universidad Simón Bolívar and Abya-Yala, 2002; Catherine Walsh (ed.) Moreno Moya, Nadia; “National Identity and in her Pensamiento crítico y matriz (de)colonial. Reflexiones latinoamericanas, Quito, Universidad Andina Coloniality of Knowledge in the Exhibition 3500 Simón Bolívar, 2005. Years of Colombian Art (1960)”. In caiana. Revista de Historia del Arte y Cultura Visual 9 Cf. Edgardo Lander (comp.), La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales; perspectivas del Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte latinoamericanas, Buenos Aires, Consejo Latinoamericano (CAIA). No 11 | Second semester 2017, pp. 201- de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO), 2003. 208. 10 Enrique Dussel, “Europa, modernidad y etnocentrismo” in Edgardo Lander (comp.), op.cit., p. 48. 11 To select works for the “contemporary section”, Intercol URL: named a committee (Eugenio Barney Cabrera, Jorge http://caiana.caia.org.ar/template/caiana.php? Varela, and Jesús Arango) that, it appears, was never called upon. See Nelly Vivas, “Arte colombiano en Miami”, El pag=articles/article_2.php&obj=293&vol=11 Espectador Dominical, Bogotá, May 1, 1960, n/p; Óscar Acosta Rivera, “Tres mil quinientos años de arte colombiano: un reportaje con el pintor Enrique Grau Araujo”, El Colombiano literario (Sunday supplement), Medellín, February 7, 1960, p. 1. 12 The attention the exhibition received from the press in Reception: November 25, 2017 Colombia, both national and regional, was largely due to the aggressive advertising campaign waged by the Intercol Acceptance: December 9, 2017 through press releases sent to publications with an array of ideological orientations. Even the liberal media that opposed the Frente Nacional, like Radiador and La Tribuna, celebrated the show. 13 S/D, “Cómo irá el arte colombiano a Miami”, El Espectador, Bogotá, January 16, 1960, p. 5. 14 Rivera Acosta, op. cit. 15 Ídem 16 Bess Furman, “Capital will see art of Colombia: exhibition opening this week is biggest ever brought from South America”, New York Times, June 19, 1960, p. 54. 17 Cf. Efraín Sánchez Cabra, “El museo del oro”, Boletín cultural y bibliográfico, vol. 40, n° 64, Bogotá, (2003), p. 9. Until that year, those collections were only open to high- ranking public officials and international dignitaries; the works were exhibited in the style of “cabinets of curiosities” in display cases in a basement space. 18 Lámpara was a magazine published by the three companies in Colombia that belonged to the Standard Oil

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