Last week’s arteBA, the contemporary art fair in Buenos Aires, included a trio of discussions, “Altering the Tale,” Reactivating the Local Canon,” and “Towards a 21st c. Salon,” organized by Cuauhtémoc Medina. The Tate Modern’s associate curator of Latin American art considered those to be three of the most important issues in contemporary Latin American art.
Prices of Latin American art obviously aren’t anywhere close to Western European prices, despite the recent increase in interest; the record for a Latin work was set in late May, when an anonymous bidder paid $7.2 million for “Troubadour,” a 1945 painting by the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo, at Christie’s.
Still, the Tate Modern, New York’s MOMA, the LACMA in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston have far more money than their Latin American counterparts. Some of Argentina’s best museums have annual budgets of 3,000 pesos, or $1,000, for acquisitions, according to Inés Katzenstein, director of the art department at the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.
Though ill enforced, antiquities in India are not allowed to leave the country as a means to preserve that country’s cultural heritage. But contemporary art works are not antiquities, and fall under no such jurisdiction. The only thing that could save all of a country’s most valued works from leaving is money. Marcelo Araujo, the director of the Pinacoteca del Estado of São Paulo, Brazil, admitted that Brazil was being outbid by Houston, running the risk of having Brazil’s most important cultural works permanently exported.
But how could a museum in Mexico compete with the prices that the Tate Modern is willing to pay, as in last year’s $300,000 acquisition for Carambole with Pendulum, by Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco?
Could Araujo pay $300,000 for Brazilian modernist Mira Schendel’s Untitled 1963? Or $170,000 for Colombian’s Maria Cardoso’s Cardoso Flea Circus?
Katzenstein discussed Museum of Contemporary Art in Rosario, Argentina’s method of coping with such meager financial resources: aggressively soliciting artists to donate their own works, tapping into their sense of social responsibility. While relying on donations has been working in Rosario to some success, there’s a danger in going into permanent crisis mode. In time, even shrill alarms can fade into the background. And try asking every artist to forgo a spot in the international market.
During my brief interview with Medina after the conference, local gallery owners from South America brooded over him like a rock star as they doled out business cards and flattery. In their eyes, right now, the highest bidder will always win.
