Colección MAC: Una suma de actualidades

The exhibition Colección MAC: Una suma de actualidades, open through January 29, 2016 at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), explores the institution's holdings gathered between 1940 and 2008, presenting in nearly 200 works of art a history and memory of the visual arts of Chile and Latin America. The works on exhibit were carefully organized and categorized, after many of them had remained warehoused in deficient conditions since the 1985 earthquake. In this way, the exhibition salvages and rolls out, in some instances for the first time, important works held by the museum. The exhibition came out of an entirely new initiative in the museum's history: the production of a deeply researched, first ever MAC Catalogue Raisonée. The process began in 2012 with the purpose of systematizing and documenting more than 250 artworks selected on the basis of two criteria: their formal importance and their historical relevance. It was supported by Fondart and by the Friends of the MAC Corporation. "The exhibition is the fulfillment of an obligation derived from our status as a public institution, presenting works in a variety of supports and from different periods in our modern and contemporary arts," says Francisco Brugnoli, director of MAC. Colección MAC: Una suma de actualidades is part of an alliance between MAC and the Itaú Foundation. Milan Ivelic, the Foundation's Director, says: "The Itaú Foundation has collaborated with this exhibition with special interest and focus; it is a cultural and artistic event of the utmost importance, since never before did we have the opportunity to exhibit so many representative works of art spanning six decades of the country's history, from 1940 to 2008, and expand the public awareness of Chile's artistic heritage with the support, also, of the collection's first Catalogue Raisonée: a study of each work's formal structure and its historical context. A new reference source thus opens up for anyone interested in exploring at a deeper level the history and theory of Chilean art." On exhibit at the Sala Zócalo in MAC Parque Forestal are paintings, sculptures, engravings, and drawings from the museum's early period, all dated before or shortly after the inaugural exhibition held in 1947. Artists like Pedro Lira, Marta Colvin, Francisco González, Emilio Pettoruti, Dora Puelma, Pablo Burchard, Herminia Arrate, and Julio Calderón, among others, converge on this gallery to tell the story of a period of transition between academic and modern art. On Level 1 visitors are invited to a chronological journey through the history of Chilean art, from the 1940s to 2008. The selection here explores both artistic production and its immediate connection with the museum, as well as its historical context, featuring various tendencies in the local scene and, of course, the National Art Awards. Works by Bororo, Cecilia Vicuña, Claudio Bertoni, Alfredo Jaar, Samy Benmayor, Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis, Nemesio Antúnez, Roberto Matta, Luis Ladrón Guevara, Matilde Pérez, Federico Assler, Lily Garafulic, Eugenio Dittborn, Francisco Brugnoli, Delia del Carril, and Pedro Millar, among many others, are displayed in this level. Works on Level 2 are grouped according to specific contingencies or historical events that became landmarks in the history of Chilean art: the American Printmaking Biennials, the Student Salons at Universidad de Chile's Art School, and the art donations made by the Popular Action Revolutionary Front (FRAP, in its Spanish acronym) in the 1960s. Works are also displayed around conceptual nodes that emerged from the research behind the Catalogue Raisonée, for example applied a...