Ana Piedad Jaramillo Restrepo - Interview

Haupt & Binder: What was the role of Fernando Botero in the establishment and development of the Museum?

Ana Piedad Jaramillo Restrepo: Fernando Botero started contributing with the Museum in 1975, when he did his first donation: the painting Exvoto, with which he had participated in one of Medellin’s Art Biennales. In the same decade, he made the donation with which the Pedrito Botero Hall was created, the collection of works the artist himself considers the best of his career: Pedrito, today housed in the hall named after the painter.

In 1997, thanks to a donation made by the artist including not only a significant amount of his own works but also several by the best names in international art, the Museum started a renovation process which included moving to a bigger building in 2000, the Old City Hall of Medellin. In 2001, also thanks to him, the Botero Square was inaugurated, with 23 of his sculptures, which since then has become a landmark and symbol of the city.

In celebration of his 80th birthday, in 2012, Botero brought his exhibition The Way of the Cross, the Passion of Christ to the Museum of Antioquia, and after seeing the good reception it had and gratitude of the Antioquean public, he decided to donate it to the Museum. Thanks to its touring capacity, this series allows the Museum to achieve international positioning. Fernando Botero has become the greatest patron of the Museum of Antioquia.

H & B: What other works by distinguished artists comprise the Museum’s permanent exhibition?

APJR: The Museum of Antioquia houses one of the department’s most iconic works of art: Horizons, by Francisco Antonio Cano, in which you can see all the influence of European academic art, plus an imaginary of Antioqui-ness and regional colonization. From the same painter, we also have Girl with roses.

The next generation of artists reclaimed the history of the country, its aboriginal roots and its social aspects, which can be seen in the 16 murals by Pedro Nel Gómez that are placed all over the building. Also present are several Antioquean watercolorists such as Eladio Vélez, with his works The ironing woman and Self-portrait, and Rafael Sáenz with Image of Antioquia.

From the 20th century, Débora Arango has a special place in our history, considered a chronicler of Medellin due to the social issues she addressed in her work, very controversial for her times.

In the middle of the 20th century, modern art appeared in the country, with an avant-garde generation of painters and sculptors such as Alejandro Obregón, Edgar Negret, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar and Antioquean artist Fernando Botero. All this artists are present in the permanent exhibits of the Museum of Antioquia.

The institution also houses several works by the most important artists from the second half of the 20th century, like Luis Fernando Peláez, Hugo Zapata, Rodrigo Callejas, Ethel Gilmour, José Antonio Suárez, and Ana Patricia Palacios.

International names have special prominence in the Museum’s halls, such as Rufino Tamayo, Max Ernst, Roberto Matta, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, Manolo Valdés, Wilfredo Lam, Richard Estes, and Antoni Tàpies.

H & B: The Museum of Antioquia actively and continually promotes social development projects, not only in Medellin but also in the region. Could you briefly describe one example, such as the Community Museums Program or the Touring Museum Program?

APJR: In the Museum + Community program the Museum of Antioquia accompanies locals and community leaders in the city so they can carry out research projects and reflect about memory, heritage and territory to answer a basic question: What is the most important thing your neighborhood and boroughs have? That’s how cultural, social, economic and political realities are explored.

The idea of Museum + Community is not for a research team from the Museum to work in the communities but for the communities themselves to make those processes their own and develop them, and exhibit the results in public spaces in their territory, such as murals or artistic activities in their neighborhoods. During 2013, local and national artistic collectives have been invited, to help the communities in this process.

The Touring Museum gives the necessary cultural management tools to the leaders of all municipalities in the department, and works to establish a collaboration network among them so they can circulate the cultural expression of their communities. Also, the program included training for the leaders in specific areas such as art and teaching, participatory curatorial practices and social construction of the patrimony.

This program, which has visited a total of 105 municipalities, encourages network-like cultural circuits generating space for dialog, creation and territory appreciation, memory, local aesthetics and cultural heritage, contributing to the Museum of Antioquia’s commitment to strengthening the social fabric and generating meaningful experiences of social responsibility.

H & B: You told us you were in Africa in a meeting with other cultural entities working with the community. Which are the key topics that –from the experience of the Museum of Antioquia– can contribute to inspire or support the work done by colleagues from other countries?

The Museum of Antioquia is part of a network of countries that get support for their community programs from the Prince Claus Fund in the Netherlands, and for three years, is part of the committee that decides about projects of other applying developing countries. This is why we get together twice a year with the other members of the committee to review the new projects and to share what each of us is doing in our own countries, apart from developing work with the host countries’ communities. From Latin America, Peru and Colombia are in the committee, and from Colombia, only the Museum of Antioquia. The Prince Claus Fund supports a community project in Commune 1 about heritage and memory. In this opportunity, we met at Burkina Faso to review new projects and to replicate with the communities there the work we do in our countries.

H & B: We’ve read that since 2010, the Museum, together with the Mayoralty of Medellin, promotes a plan for urban renovation and the building of a cultural district downtown. What is this plan about and what has it been achieved so far?

APJR: This is one of the long term goals of the Museum of Antioquia: to turn the center of Medellin into a cultural district. In order to achieve it, the institution is planning to extend its central offices to the back of its current building. In this way, the Museum would have more room to exhibit its collection and carry out cultural and educational activities.

Also, hand in hand with the city administration and cultural organizations from the department, an architectural intervention of various parts and buildings would be done in order to reclaim and make good use of this area.

Ana Piedad Jaramillo Restrepo:
Journalist and social communicator from the University of Antioquia, with postgraduate studies in cinematography at the University of Paris VIII, and in Social Sciences at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris. She was cultural editor and correspondent in Paris of the El Mundo newspaper of Medellin. She was the cultural attaché of the Colombian Embassy in France and held other diplomatic posts. She was director of the Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Theater, in Bogota. Since 2011, she has been the director of the Museum of Antioquia.