The National Council of Culture and Arts Chile is delighted to announce details of the new National Centre for Contemporary Art Chile, located on the former premises of the historic Los Cerillos Airport (active between 1929 and 2006). This iconic building will house the country’s first government-run contemporary arts centre, which will support contemporary art from Chile with research, archive work, conservation and a programme of exhibitions.
The Director of the National Centre for Contemporary Art Chile will be announced in early 2017, along with the full exhibition programme. The centre will be home to the National Council of Culture and Arts Chile’s contemporary art collection, including works currently housed in Galeria Gabriela Mistral (the National Council of Culture and Arts Chile Art Gallery).
The historic airport, situated on grounds donated to the Chilean government by the American philanthropist Daniel Guggenheim in 1928, was a symbol of democratization and modernization. In 2016, the 4,000 square metre building was transferred to the National Council of Culture and Arts Chile, which opened to the public on the September 22, 2016.
The newly renovated space has been designed to complement the original Modernist architecture, updated to enhance the display of contemporary art. The new space includes exhibition spaces, libraries, a documentation centre, a digital archive centre, research laboratories, and storage warehouses equipped with the latest technology for the conservation of public and private collections of contemporary art.
The centre opened with Una Imagen llamada Palabra (An Image called Word), an exhibition curated by Chilean artist Camilo Yañez, featuring artworks created over the last 50 years. The exhibition reinterprets a key element of Chilean contemporary artistic production: the critical interplay of image and text, and includes works by Gonzalo Díaz, Paz Errázuriz, Eugenio Dittborn, Iván Navarro, Cecilia Vicuña, and many others.
“This is an important new space for Chile, a modernist building dedicated to strengthening conservation policies, research, archival work, and the display of contemporary Chilean and Latin American visual art.” Ernesto Ottone, Minister President of the National Council for Culture and the Arts Chile.
National Council of Culture and Arts Chile
The National Council of Culture and Arts Chile is the governing body responsible for implementing public policies for cultural development in Chile. Cultural development is supported through the promotion of artistic activity, the preservation of cultural heritage, advocacy of public initiatives that encourage participation in the arts, and facilitation of access to cultural events. Ernesto Ottone has been Minister President of the National Council for Culture and the Arts Chile since 2015.
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