Del taller al altiplano

Between 1910 and 1955, the map of artistic institutions in the country changed dramatically. From a few entities based in Buenos Aires, a wide network of museums and academies throughout the national territory was transferred. The Northwest was one of the regions where institutionalization had greater intensity: in those years museums and art schools were founded in Tucumán, Salta, Catamarca, Santiago del Estero and La Rioja. The process involved traditionalist and avant-garde artists; to conservative, radical and Peronist governments. Despite the differences, they had in common an interest in the region and its visual imaginaries. This book tells a story of those artistic institutions of the Northwest with the aim of paying off a debt still outstanding: to integrate this geography into the debates on the historiography of Argentine art. It does so from a conception of social development in which access to culture plays a crucial role. The foundation of museums and academies had the objective of sealing, on a symbolic level, the modernization of a reunited nation.