The Modern Art Museum of Medellín and its new headquarters
It is an increasingly common practice to restore old industrial buildings and use them as cultural spaces; it tends to be part of ambitious urban renewal projects for underused or unused areas, which become more central and accessible as a result of urban sprawl. London, Bilbao, Barcelona and Buenos Aires have turned formerly semi-derelict areas once populated by factories and warehouses into luxurious neighbourhoods where magnificent buildings, formerly used as factory premises and boasting imposing architectural structures, have become excellent settings for current art practices in their many and varied expressions.
The city of Medellín has followed this restoration trend, creating a new container for the relatively veteran MAMM. The old Talleres Robledo of the Ciudad del Río, built in 1939 to house an iron and steel company, became, just a few months ago, an attractive art centre boasting a large central room, with an area of 720 m² and a height of 15 metres, and two lateral rooms, with an area of 220 m² and 280 m² respectively, as well as two small spaces devoted to special projects, which permit a versatile use of the space.
The Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín was founded in 1978, thanks to a group of citizens –architects, managers, artists and intellectuals– who were determined to boost the interest in contemporary art aroused by the recent Art Biennials held in Medellín. For the last three decades, it has been located in a relatively small space in the Carlos E. Restrepo quarter, which is next to the Universidad de Medellín. During these thirty years, the MAMM has amassed a collection made up of more than 5,000 works, noteworthy among which is the important legacy of the painter Débora Arango (1907-2005), a major figure in Colombian art, whose radically personal work is pervaded by a vitriolic look at the time in which she lived, and whose canvases and drawings convey a sharp criticism of women’s situation and repression, both political and that rooted in day-to-day behaviour.
Although the old building continues to house the collection, the new space is articulated as a temporary exhibition centre, devoted to offering a dynamic programme, one of whose aims is to attract new audiences, especially younger ones. Its management team is also made up of young people, led by the director Juliana Restrepo, and the head curator Óscar Roldán.
In November, 2009, the new centre carried out a frenzied inaugural programme throughout the month, which included activities and exhibitions aimed at presenting the new space and connecting it to citizens. One of the exhibitions was 2009 Acciones de E-cosecha, by the architect collective Qenep and Oficina Informal, which consisted of 2009 bags, which also served as seats, and inside which visitors could find soil and seeds from different indigenous species, which they could take home and plant, thus taking an active part in a collaborative environmental projects.
After an extensive show devoted to the artist Jan Fabre, the MAMM is now presenting the exhibition Crónica. 1995/2005 en la colección Juan Gallo, a journey through recent art production in Colombia, made up of photographic, video and pictorial pieces. In the next few months, the space will house shows devoted to Débora Arango and Doris Salcedo. The centre is scheduled to be expanded in 2011, with the building of an annex with new rooms for temporary exhibitions and rotating shows featuring works from the MAMM’s collection, as well as a storage space which will complete the museum’s current facilities, i.e. its didactic section, its shop–dedicated to cutting-edge design– and the spaces devoted to workshops, meetings and lectures.
The MAMM is hoping to become a landmark in today’s art world, as well as play an important role in the renovation of Medellín, which aspires to erase a not-too-distant violent past, linked to drug trafficking, through ambitious urban planning and engineering projects, such as the metrocable, which has connected hitherto inaccessible and deprived areas with the city centre, and cultural policies which seek to bring about the social integration of marginal urban areas.
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