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Juan Yarur Presents his Collection at the MAC-Parque Forestal in Chile
04July
News

Juan Yarur Presents his Collection at the MAC-Parque Forestal in Chile

At age 29, Juan Yarur, the youngest son of late textile entrepreneur Amado Yarur and one of the most outstanding private collectors of Chilean contemporary art, will showcase for the first time –and in an unexpected way- his private collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC)-Parque Forestal in Santiago de Chile. This exhibit –kickoff slated for July 31 under the title “Juan Yarur Collection: A Personal Story- is curated by Cecilia Brunson (Santiago de Chile, 1972), Yarur’s top art purchase consultant. The cancellation of the "El Arte de Negar el Arte", an exhibition that was supposed to open on June 18 on those same premises, paved the way for the mounting of Yarur’s collection. The cancelled exposition –curated by the institution itself- was supposed to expose 50 pieces by Marcel Duchamp, contained in the private collection of Italy’s Luisella Zignore, penciled in as the largest Duchamp collection on the face of the earth. Following that cancellation, MAC executives started looking for Chilean collectors willing to showcase their works. The Juan Yarur Collection will take two floors of the MAC and will consist of oils, lithographs, photographs and installations. Some of the highlights within that collection are historic artworks by Andy Warhol and Gerhard Richter, some world-class masters like Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin, Takashi Murakami and Carlos Amorales. A considerable chunk of his collection is made up of photographs, including shots taken by such boldface names as Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, Annie Leibovitz and David LaChapelle, among others. In addition, Yarur’s collection includes pieces by Alfredo Jaar and Paz Errázuriz, and it pays special heed to the generation of Chilean artists from the 1990s, such as Magdalena Atria, Catalina Bauer, Josefina Guilisasti, Cristóbal Lehyt, Livia Marín, Gerardo Pulido, Tomás Rivas, Pablo Rivera, Cristián Salineros, Cristián Silva and Malú Stewart. A swatch of artworks from the latter was shown between late 2010 and early 2011 at The Saatchi Gallery in London, as part of a retrospective entitled "Tectonic Shifts". In addition to being a celebrated art promoter and collector, Juan Yarur has been since 2010 the youngest member of the Latin American Acquisition Committee at the Tate Modern in London. What’s more, following the acquisition by this British museum of artworks by Chilean artists Eugenio Dittborn (Santiago de Chile, 1943) and Juan Downey (Santiago de Chile, 1940 - New York, 1993), this young collector set out to enhance the Chilean art stock at the Tate, eventually donating the “Adam’s Apple series by photographer Paz Errázuriz in 2011. Last but not least, it’s important to point out that as a complement to the Juan Yarur Collection: A Personal Story and with the support of the National Council for Culture and the Art attached to the Universidad del Desarrollo, MAC will be conducting a cycle through the entire month of August to tackle the reasons why and the ways people collect art, how to pry the local artist market open, the ongoing acquisition guidelines followed by public institutions and the new possibilities after the enactment of the Cultural Donation Act. This exhibit will come to a close in late September as a threshold to the grand opening of the Ch.ACO Fair, the most important of its kind in Chile. Source: Arteinformado