European Tradition and Foundational Narratives of Argentine Art in the Inaugural Exhibition of the National Museum of Fine Arts in 1896

Abstract

The founding of the National Museum of Fine Arts in 1895 marked a milestone in the institutionalization of art in Argentina. Its first collection largely reflected the tastes and acquisitions of the private collectors who contributed to its formation. Equally decisive at this initial stage were the interventions of Eduardo Schiaffino, the Museum’s director from 1895 to 1910, through his selection of works from private donors and government offices, as well as through a few but significant acquisitions. Scholarly studies on the Museum’s history and its curatorial strategies across different periods have generally failed to identify a coherent rationale in the inaugural exhibition of 1896, often describing it as a random display of works within the available space. However, an examination of Schiaffino’s writings, together with the catalogue published for the occasion, suggests that the 1896 exhibition served as a stage on which Schiaffino could articulate his ideas about national art and its relationship with both European tradition and contemporaneity. This first curatorial discourse of the Museum in 1896 acquires meaning within the broader network of ideas that, in the local context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were grounded in the art–civilization paradigm and exalted the museum’s educational agency.