Carmen Waugh
Known across the art scene for her long trajectory, the cultural promoter and Chile's first gallerist Carmen Waugh died on April 24th at the age of 80, in Santiago.
Waugh always said that her relationship with gallery management developed by chance, when she was left in charge of the framing shop her father had inherited in downtown Santiago. It was at that location that Chile's first professional art gallery was established in 1955, when Waugh made the acquaintance of artists active during that period and offered to exhibit their work. This space hosted the work of Nemesio Antúnez, Roser Bru, José Balmes, García Barrios, and Mario Carreño, among others.
In 1972, Waugh was in charge of organizing works donated by several artists to the Salvador Allende government and traveled to Spain, where she became Roberto Matta's agent. She organized exhibitions of the work of the Chilean surrealist and of Rufino Tamayo. She also lived in Italy (with Argentine poet Juan Gelman) and created the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Julio Cortázar in Nicaragua.
In the 1980s, Waugh returned to Chile and established the La Casa Larga cultural center. From there she promoted young artists of the period, such as Bororo, Samy Benmayor, and Pablo Domínguez.
As the first director of the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, since 1991, she organized the museum and maintained its collection, which included works by Antoni Tapies, Frank Stella, Joan Miró, and Oswaldo Guayasamín, among others, and was exhibited at the Museo de Bellas Artes in 2001.
After going through plenty of red tape, in 2005 Waugh was able to create a corporation that would make the museum's art collection the property of the Chilean government. But after this decision she was dismissed from her post as director of the museum, which generated an intense polemic in the art world.
After Waugh's recent retirement from art world activities, the Isabel Aninat gallery organized a tribute to her work, with an exhibition featuring photographs, letters, and art from her personal collection: Matta, José Balmes, Carlos Cruz-Díez, José Venturelly, and Martín Chirino, among others.
