Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts

Last updated
Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts
Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts 2023.jpg
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts
Established1880
Location Santiago, Chile
Visitors386,714 (2009) [1]
DirectorFernando Pérez Oyarzún
Website http://www.mnba.cl/

The Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts (Spanish : Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes or MNBA), located in Santiago, Chile, is one of the major centers for Chilean art and for broader South American art. Established in 1880 (making it the oldest in South America), the organization is managed by the Artistic Union (Unión Artística).

Contents

The current building, the Palace of the Fine Arts (el Palacio de Bellas Artes), dates to 1910 and commemorates the first centennial of the Independence of Chile. It was designed by the Chilean architect Emile Jéquier in a full-blown Beaux-arts style and is situated in the Parque Forestal of Santiago. Behind it is located the Museum of Contemporary Art (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo) of the University of Chile, in which is also located the old School of Fine Arts (Escuela de Bellas Artes).

History

Foundational Plate of the National Museum of Fine Arts Placa Fundacional de MNBA.JPG
Foundational Plate of the National Museum of Fine Arts

The museum was officially founded on September 18, 1880, and originally named Museo National de Pinturas (National Painting Museum).

The president of Chile, Don Aníbal Pinto, the minister Don Manuel García de la Huerta, Marcos Segundo Maturana and the sculptor José Miguel Blanco together managed the creation of the museum, whose first director was the painter Juan Mochi.

Exterior of the museum after the 2010 Chile earthquake. Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Earthquake in Chile.jpg
Exterior of the museum after the 2010 Chile earthquake.

In 1887 the government acquired a building known as "the Parthenon", which had been constructed by the Artistic Union for the purpose of hosting annual art expositions. The museum moved there and changed its name to Museum of Fine Arts.

In 1901 the government decided to create an original building for the Museum and School of Fine Arts, and Emilio Jéquier was selected. The building was built in the Parque Forestal, a landscaping work by Jorge Enrique Dubois, who had been trained in the gardening school of Versailles in France.

Upon the completion of the building, it was officially inaugurated on September 21, 1910, as part of an International Exposition which formed part of the celebrations for the centennial of independence. The Museum has remained in the "Palace" ever since.

The building was damaged during the 1960 Chilean Earthquake, after which it was seismically upgraded, such that damage during the 2010 Chile earthquake was confined to fallen elements of the exterior.

Architecture

The Palacio de Bellas Artes, the current home of the Museum, is in the Neoclassical Second Empire style and the Baroque Revival style, strongly reinforced with Art Nouveau details and touches of metallic structural architecture. The central entrance is through a gigantically enlarged version of Borromini's false-perspective window reveals from Palazzo Barberini, which encloses a pedimented doorway entirely surrounded by glass, a Beaux-Arts touch. Through a broken pediment the squared cupola rises to the top. The internal layout and the facade are both modelled after the Petit Palais of Paris. The glass cupola that crowns the central hall was designed and manufactured in Belgium and brought to Chile in 1907. The approximate weight of the armour of the museum is 115,000 kg, of the glass of the cupola, 2,400 kg.

Architectonically, the floorplan of the museum is one of a central axis marked by the entrance and a grand hall with a staircase to the second floor. In the grand hall, above a balcony from the second floor, there is a carving in high relief which depicts two angels supporting a shield. They are located in the semi-vault above the heads of two Caryatids that arise from the balcony, carved by Antonio Coll y Pi.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palacio de Bellas Artes</span> Cultural centre in Mexico City

The Palacio de Bellas Artes is a prominent cultural center in Mexico City. This hosts performing arts events, literature events and plastic arts galleries and exhibitions. "Bellas Artes" for short, has been called the "art cathedral of Mexico", and is located on the western side of the historic center of Mexico City which is close to the Alameda Central park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Former National Congress of Chile building</span>

The Former National Congress Building is the former home of the Chilean Congress. Congress met in this building in central Santiago until Salvador Allende's socialist government was overthrown by Augusto Pinochet's military coup d'état on September 11, 1973.

Museum of Fine Arts may refer to:

The Arts Faculty, University of Chile, is an academic discipline within at the University of Chile, which is located in the capital city of Santiago. Within the Arts Faculty the following departments are represented: visual arts, dance, music, sound, theatre, and arts theory; which occupy three buildings on campus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">José Villa Soberón</span> Cuban artist (born 1950)

José Ramón Villa Soberón is a Cuban artist, particularly known for his public sculptures around Havana. He studied at the Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana, Cuba and the Academy of Plastic Arts in Prague. He is a professor at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. His sculptures, paintings, engravings, drawings and designs are held by the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana, and in 1996 he was one of the selected artist in the second Trienal Americana de Escultura in Argentina.

Museo de Bellas Artes may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parque Forestal</span>

Parque Forestal is an urban park in the city of Santiago, Chile. The park was created on reclaimed land from the Mapocho River and is located in the historical downtown of Santiago, west of Plaza Baquedano and east of Estación Mapocho. It is bordered on the north by Santa María Avenue, on the south by Merced Street and Ismael Valdés Vergara Street. At its eastern end, the park becomes Balmaceda Park, forming an almost unbroken stretch of greenery along the Mapocho River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palacio de la Real Audiencia de Santiago</span>

The Palacio de la Real Audiencia de Santiago is a building located in the north central village of the Plaza de Armas in Santiago, Chile. The building dates back to 1808 and houses, since 1982, the National History Museum of Chile.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palacio de los Tribunales de Justicia de Santiago</span>

The Palacio de los Tribunales de Justicia de Santiago is the building housing the Supreme Court of Chile, the Court of Appeals of Santiago, and the Court-martial Court of the Chilean Army, Chilean Air Force and Carabineros de Chile. It occupies a full block-front of Compañía Street between Bandera and Morandé Streets. The building diagonally faces the Palacio de la Real Aduana, which houses the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, and Montt Varas Square sits in front.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barrio Lastarria</span>

Barrio Lastarria is an historical neighborhood in the center of Santiago, Chile. Now a popular tourist hub, Barrio Lastarria is a center for cultural activity, with cinemas, theaters, museums, restaurants and bars. Activities such as festivals and live performances are commonly held throughout the streets of Lastarria given its strong cultural flavor, particularly in J.V. Lastarria street and Parque Forestal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manuel Antonio Caro</span> Chilean painter (1835–1903)

Manuel Antonio Caro Olavarría was a Chilean painter and is classed among Chile's best-loved artists. The son of Victorino Caro y Cárcamo and Asunción de Olavarría y Sierpe, he was named Caro Olavarría. The first Chilean student to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Caro's body of work included portraits and scenes of everyday life, and earned him high honors and international recognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chilean art</span>

Chilean art refers to all kinds of visual art developed in Chile, or by Chileans, from the arrival of the Spanish conquerors to the modern day. It also includes the native pre-Columbian pictorial expression on modern Chilean territory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art</span> Museum in Santiago, Chile

The Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art is located in Santiago, Chile. It is one of the city's major museums, created in 1947, and is run by the University of Chile Faculty of Arts. Since 2005, the museum has had two separate sites: MAC Parque Forestal and MAC Quinta Normal Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palacio Baburizza</span>

Palacio Baburizza is the former residence of Croatian businessman Pascual Baburizza located in Valparaíso, Chile. It was built in 1916 by Italian architects, and eventually turned into a museum in 1971, and declared a historic monument in 1976.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enrique Lynch del Solar</span>

Enrique Lynch del Solar was a painter of portraits, and ocean landscapes, a pioneer of the Chilean Modernist art movement. He studied painting in Paris, France at the École des Beaux-Arts with Diogène Maillart. Upon his return to Chile, he became Director of the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts "Museo de Bellas Artes en Parque Forestal".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Álvaro Casanova Zenteno</span>

Álvaro Casanova Zenteno was a prominent marine painter and of historic naval warfare, a statesman his art is classified as realist, expressionist, classical, and romantic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pereira Palace</span> Building in Santiago, Chile

The Palacio Pereira is a historic neoclassical mansion located at the corner of San Martín and Huérfanos streets, in downtown Santiago, Chile. Built in the second half of the 19th century, it was declared a Historic Monument in 1981, but its deterioration was not stopped and remained abandoned for several decades.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Rodig</span> Chilean sculptor and painter (1901–1972)

Laura Rodig was a Chilean painter, sculptor, illustrator and educator. She was one of the leaders of the Pro-Emancipation Movement of Chilean Women (MEMCH).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Academy of Painting (Santiago, Chile)</span> Chilean fine art school

Academy of Painting, also known as the School of Fine Arts of Santiago, was a Chilean art school, founded on March 17, 1849 in Santiago, Chile. The school produced many works for the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts, where it once was located. In 1932, it merged with and is now known as the Department of Visual Arts within the Arts Faculty, University of Chile.

Dora Puelma Francino de Fuenzalida was a Chilean painter, sculptor and writer who belonged to the Generación del 13. Her work was characterized by "fidelidad a la tradición pictórica del paisaje y las técnicas de la representación que siempre defendió por sobre las tendencias abstractas que se impusieron en su época", which is why her work was included within Chilean pictorial naturalism that she approached mainly through the use of oil and watercolor techniques.

References

  1. "Servicios 2004-2009". Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos. Archived from the original on June 29, 2012. Retrieved September 18, 2010.

33°26′7.15″S70°38′36.81″W / 33.4353194°S 70.6435583°W / -33.4353194; -70.6435583