Art Collecting Today, Heritage Tomorrow

Corina Matamoros has been working for several years as curator of the cuban contemporary art collection at the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA) in Havana. From there, she has conducted an intense job as researcher, lecturer in both cuba and other countries, where she has taken the works of some of the best-known cuban artists through personal and collective exhibits. In 2009 she published Miradas de curador in Havana.

The MNBA is no doubt the country’s largest collector from all viewpoints and you’ve been doing your job as researcher and curator over the past 34 years. This privileged situation, and position, allows you to apparently work with no risks or fears to make mistakes, since we’re always thankful of whatever you can collect and preserve for both the present and the future of the nation’s collective memory. But, how does that status quo influence in assessing what, in your own judgment, must be a collection of Cuban art?

Working in a great museum will always be a privilege for me. One of the things I long for the most is saunter all alone down the warehouses of works, as I used to do when I started working at the MNBA. That’s banned now, but I remember it was so fascinating because you could watch, in the most absolute intimacy, how the pieces could dialogue and interact among themselves. Only a few times you can see a female head painted by Victor Manuel next to another one painted by Reynolds, or a landscape by Francesco Guardi next to another one by Laplante, and see how they “react”, what they “tell” each other. It’s not only that I like being a curator, but I must also tell you I’ll never turn down the job of dusting off the stored paintings if I had to do so. Since I’ve always taken my job to heart, I’m far from thinking that I’m free of risks or fears when it comes to art collecting. The selection is a very complex job. I wouldn’t thank any curator for buying anything for a national museum. On the contrary, I believe I’ll demand a lot of knowledge and a tremendous cultural perspective.

All series of objects tell you something about the hand that collects them. That’s inevitable. It’s part of the collection’s own conditioning and it shouldn’t bother us with things other than what any social, technological or economic circumstance can bring. I work for a national institution whose mission consists of gathering the finest art from the country from a historic and esthetic standpoint. So, a curator is not free to buy just any work. It must be a piece that has achieved a certain level of proven representativeness, certain artistic recognition; that dignifies a stage not completely comprehended that needs to be rescued, among other curatorial lines of thought. When you collect current art, many circumstances are against you: there’s no well-established assessment of the artwork and sometimes the market manages to ram its whims down our throats, let alone that the passions of the cultural stakeholders linked to the artistic activity eventually pull their weight around, not to mention a huge array of contingencies that throw their weight around in a variety of ways, thus making this job so dicey and error-prone. There’s nothing wrong when a contemporary collection loses a bigger percentage of its price than a historic collection.

In my case, I’m always on the lookout in the face of such a social responsibility. I try to keep tabs on artists and their careers. I start getting to know them since they are students; I watch their exhibits and stay tuned on the reviews their works could generate, the acclaim in different publics, the awards they could get, and of course, in the long run I rely on my instincts. It’s an instinct that has also grown more mature and accurate. I don’t think I possess any kind of status quo that makes my voice speaks louder than others. I’m the kind of curator who likes visiting artists and asking them a thousand things I don’t understand. I feel great admiration for the great works and I’m humbly there for them. When I handpick one, that decision is discussed in a commission of curators, restorers and executives. This debate can pan out to be quite tough sometimes, but this is the right place to make economic, preservation, museological, practical and esthetic considerations. I can assure you whims are few and far between in there, especially now that the artwork price has skyrocketed and the budget for purchases is slimmer.

Of course, I cannot define the orientation of the National Museum’s Cuban art collection. From my curatorial job, however, what I can really do is fight and make room for the finest Cuban art of today to be a part of the country’s historic heritage. I’ve been doing this since the 1980s and I truly believe I haven’t done a bad job. Having brought to the museum the first pieces made by Kcho, Toirac, Saavedra, Garaicoa, Los Carpinteros, Rene and Ponjuan, Sandra Ramos, Abel Barroso, Tania Bruguera, and many others, has been something very important to me and hopefully to the country’s heritage. When you look back and understand that these purchases you made fifteen years ago are now pieces admired and recognized, you feel great satisfaction. Getting started more recently, for instance, with the video collection, was something that gave me so much happiness.

TheMNBA is some sort of a hybrid between a fine arts institution –as its name indicates- and a museum of contemporary art, given the character of the artworks acquired in the late 20th century. It seems to be a rara avis in the world scene. Will this institution continue to be a hybrid museum for a longer time or will it wait to finally get a space of its own in the country to showcase the most recent artistic practices and expressions, thus breaking away from those things that have marked its course since the mid 1950s? I know that implies –with everything well thought out- to have a more adequate name in line with the new functions that an institution like this would assume, doesn’t it?

I’m not a museum executive and I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what the future holds. For the time being, I don’t see any major funding on the road ahead. The 2001 remodeling, executed by the Council of State, is far from getting a repeat now. We’ll continue to be that rara avis. But let me tell you that this is not so much of a rarity as it seems. Great museums, like the Metropolitan Museum in NYC, for example, have enhanced their spaces dramatically to exhibit contemporary arts within the context of its eye-popping historic and ethnographic collection, based on the vast amount of cultures and art period represented there. The Louvre is doing its own in an effort to bring the contemporary closer to a museum that’s been an icon of the “fine arts”. So, this hybrid character is not a rarity and for us, in a way, it’s kind of easier to do that because our thesauruses are less heterogenic. 

Of course, contemporary art museums have specifics of their own and it’d be great to be able to design the curatorial layout, the new missions and the cultural strategy of an institution in order to strengthen our artistic production. There’s no doubt we need to do that.

Since its remodeling back in 2001, the MNBA has kept its exhibition structure intact. I mean, it’s been there for little longer than a decade. Should the different collection harbored there always remain that way for the spectators or is the museum considering new dynamics in the future to allow for other readings of the Cuban art? Is this the way the Cuban art should be read in order to make adequate judgments and assessments today and in the future?

A decade is not too long for a permanent hall in a fine arts museum. People hardly ever notice that when we refer to the hall of 19th-century landscapes or the first engravings made on the island. Around 80 percent of museums don’t change their permanent exhibits in decades. It’s the normal thing to do. But when you have a hybrid museum, a decade sounds like an error proportion when it comes to the contemporary arts. The timing for a period is wrong for another one. That’s one of the inconveniences of having a hybrid museum.

Pretty aware of this and as I said in previous occasions, my project for the museum’s more contemporary halls was conceived with a two-pronged museological discourse: a permanent one and another that is supposed to be approximately renewed every other year. It was the way I figured out to tone down that effect of redoubled and quasi-selfish attention demanded in these times. But this project was not executed for a number of reasons. What was meant to be the renewable hall was transformed into a hall for transitory expositions. They looked like similar functions back then, but we’re now paying the price for that humongous difference of sense.

I’m deeply interested in making this change, but you need funding to make that change. The material recourses the institution counts on are really slim, and the mere fact of just readjusting a mounting or changing light fixtures is a hard thing to do. The reading of Cuban art also endures the circumstances of the country’s daily life; it goes through the same hardships and tribulations. The museum is not an entity unattached from the reality of the nation. A new museological deployment for the contemporary art section requires logistics and economic supports the institution is not endowed with. We’ve got lots of ideas to implement, but it’s really hard to get new things done. And I don’t rule out either a lack of wisdom, methods and solutions to make up for the objective scarcities we have.

It seems that collections at MNBA forced the training of a group of curators in keeping with certain historic periods of the Cuban arts, including some devoted to specific decades. Is this the result of a research, reflexive, curatorial or attentive need or does it have to do with other criteria? Haven’t you considered to taking on a different structure aimed at focusing on such expressions as graphics, painting, sculpturing, photography, audiovisuals and the like? Wouldn’t this be more favorable for the global management of artistic expressions and their roles in the course of a country’s history, contrary to a vision of temporary dates or compartments?

Yes, that’s a possibility. Some museums use that classification for certain expressions. I think each one has advantages and disadvantages. MoMA is pretty strong when it comes to cinema and photography, for instance. Our heritage collections of photography were moved to Cuba’s Photo Library in the late 1980s and it’s there where that thesaurus is studied. The closest we’ve ever gotten in that sense was when we had an expert in sculptures: Ernesto Cardet, a great connoisseur of this expression whose opinions are always listened to carefully whenever we deal with that topic in the museum. In my case, I prefer studying a period rather than an expression. Due to training and traditional reasons, art studies in Cuba are less technical and more centered on the perspective of the historic evolution. It’s an educational shortcoming we’ve been dragging on with for a might long time now and that has its consequences. In Cuba, an art historian is unable to distinguish among types of engravings, pictorial techniques, types of paper, wood, stones or metals. When you analyze that at the Louvre school you have to study techniques and materials for three years, then you realize why we are what we are.

Perhaps I’ve always preferred a period to an expression because to study the years embraced in my collection, from 1979 to date, I ought to be open to all working methods, from performance and installations to the digital media. If I had my mind made up to study engraving, for example, I’d surely take a closer look at the entire history of this expression in our vast storage of prints and I could even delve into the whole ancient collection from the old masters all the way to today’s works. Yet I prefer to unravel the epoch, the sense of what many think of as a given moment. I’m Cuban after all and I’ve got shortcomings of my own in my education!

There are other institutional collectors in Cuba that, one way or another, have acquired works from major Cuban artists over the past fifty years. Do you think it’s right for the local and foreign public to enjoy, at least for one fleeting moment, that artistic wealth, all that heritage?

To be honest to you, I think here in Cuba we have a poor public vocation toward institutional collection outside the museum boundaries. Isolation and poor heritage culture have turned certain collection bought with State funds or donated by their artists into genuine domains. Some places harbor collections that are simply off limits or you need to clear higher hurdles than those standing in the way of private collections.

It’s important for collections lodged in State-run institutions to be transparent and protected through the public disclaimers of their social missions, of their thesauruses and accurate labeling. You need to have programs of social visibility and educational activities in place. If a masterpiece is located in an office, that locale must be accessible at least by means of labeling available to both the public and the experts. An artwork that cannot be seen by the people doesn’t have any heritage function to do.

I don’t believe the National Museum should absorb all those collections. On the contrary, I think they should be properly established and have a clear social projection. What we must not allow to happen is to have those collections destroyed or exposed in inaccessible places; to let them go to waste due to proper preservation or hinder the public role they are bound to play.

Why is Cuban sculpturing so poorly represented at the Museum, as well as photography, billboards and posters, especially the latter that has played such a major role in Cuban culture since the 1960s, so much that it was penciled in as Cuba’s preeminent image at a given time? Is there any kind of biased approach toward these expressions? Are they probably considered as “lesser” compared to, say, painting –an expression that virtually dominated the museum halls?

No, curatorially speaking there’s no such thing as a biased approach. We wanted so badly to have a hall for posters, but we couldn’t get everything. Bear in mind that the 2001 museological remodeling enhanced dramatically what we expose today. Just think that the building where all the collections were exhibited, both national and international, is not exclusively devoted to Cuban art. My own collection, that it had never been exposed before, was exhibited for the first time in 2001 with 65 pieces. Spaces actually grew in size, but they are not unlimited.

I’ve noticed that few locals visit the two great venues of the MNBA, even on weekends. Do you see it the same way? Have you devised the way to revert this situation or do you believe my vision is somewhat overblown?

I don’t have right here the historic statistics of visitors to the museum, only the latest figures. In 2010, 101,000 people visited the MNBA, and approximately 115,000 visited it in 2011, a little uptick, as you can see. Guided visits in 2011 tabbed 520 and embraced a grand total of 8,000 people. During the summer vacations, many families come to the museum with their children. It’s so nice to see that happen. Last year, the success of the Caravaggio exhibit gave us one big lesson to learn, because a grand master from the 17th century swept the Cuban public off its feet. It was so good to know that.

Yet we do know those figures are way below what they should really be. A museum must never give up to the public. Our nonpermanent exhibits should try to strike a better balance between attractiveness and specialization. In order to come up with luring and new museology, and express through it contents much likelier to catch on among spectators, we need resources. The two halls reserved for nonpermanent exhibitions of Cuban art are small, are insufficiently lit and have no partitioning modules. I insist: we’re very much down to earth. The museum is right here, in our beloved Havana, breathing next to it. What’s more, we don’t have catalogs available to everyone. We also need didactical pamphlets, more promotion…

I think the process for acquiring artworks made by Cuban artists ceased in 1999 due to the museum’s hardships. Is there any strategy in the offing to resume that process and further enhance the collections? Will this process inevitably stop this year?

The acquisition process didn’t cease in 1999. We’ve bought artworks until 2006. In 2006, for instance, when I set up the Museo Tomado exhibition –the first ever on video- I was able to buy virtually everything we screened and exposed. I’ve also purchased multimedia pieces, such as Reporte de ilusionesby Luis Garciga and Miguel Moya, or El patriota invisible, by Reinier Leyva Novo, also in digital format. The point is that we’re buying far less works due to the skyrocketing prices. The good market acclaim of some of the best artists has made prices of all the Cuban art soar. This implies that pieces by young creators, barely established, peak way higher than the prices we can afford, because our budget has remained virtually flat for years. These circumstances hit us hard, of course. We can’t compete with commercial galleries or with some museums or foreign collectors that pay good artists good money for their finest installations. On the other hand, we seldom have the fund to buy a drawing. They have the upper hand in that respect.

It’s curious, you know, because in the early 1990s nearly none of the artists has a penny and what the museum paid for their works helped them set up shop in Havana and start their careers in the nation’s capital. Now it’s all the way around; our money is not good enough. But fortunately there are always some artists with great consciousness who are willing to donate their works to the National Museum and we can even cut a good deal with them at very preferential prices. It’s an agreement between curators and creators, based on mutual respect and understanding because we all know what continuing the sponsorship of a representative national thesaurus like this is actually like.

Life has changed. Now there are two different currencies in the country and we pay in Cuban pesos, while many creators prefer to take their chances under the gavel at Subasta Habana (Auction Havana), in the commercial galleries or with private merchants. Many people get rid of pieces that have been in the family for a long time, just as a way to make ends meet. We also used to get a lot from those private collectors, but that was a long time ago.

We have toyed with the idea of proposing the Museum’s front office the possibility of resuming the Artist of the Month space because it was a formula that really paid off in the past in an effort to encourage donations, let alone the chance of shifting the institution into gear once again. But once again, we’re tied up to the funding thing.

A donation policy is always possible if it’s laid out carefully. Donations can’t be too wide open, but focused on periods, artists and works. They shouldn’t compromise the institution’s exhibition policy and things like that. It takes a few requirements that must be looked into thoroughly in order to make it work both pertinently and efficiently.

If the MNBA is unable to acquire new artworks due to the scares resources the State can provide, will this then mean the end of art collecting effort? Won’t we see works produced in the 21st century?

Yes, that would be it; it’d be the end of art collecting for the National Museum of Fine Arts, and right before its centennial anniversary. In 2011 we were earmarked some funds to buy works. However, the collection of the National Council of the Fine Arts accrued. What I’m certain about is that as long as there’s no other institution like the National Museum of Fine Arts, with such a rich thesaurus, the museum should count on the funds to carry on its immensely historic job of harboring what might probably be tomorrow’s heritage.