Le Musée de la Solidarité Salvador Allende, de l'Unité Populaire au retour d'exil (1971-1991)

Le Musée de la Solidarité Salvador Allende, de l’Unité Populaire au retour d’exil (1971-1991)
by Élodie Lebeau

Thursday, 8 October 2020, 14.00 – 16.00

Arts et Sciences Humaines
Université Grenoble Alpes

Multimedia Poster

In April 1971, while the Operación Verdad (Operation Truth) was being held in Santiago de Chile, convened by the government of Popular Unity, the Spanish art critic José María Moreno Galván proposed to launch an initiative of solidarity in world art circles to support the Chilean path to socialism (vía chilena hacia el socialismo). As a result of this meeting, a dozen personalities from the “art worlds” (H. Becker) came together in the International Committee for Artistic Solidarity with Chile (CISAC), chaired by the Brazilian art critic Mario Pedrosa, which led to the creation of the Museum of Solidarity (Museo de la Solidaridad).

This conference will show how this unprecedented museum project should be understood as one of the results of a continental cultural strategy aimed at building an alternative model to Pan-Americanism. It will also examine the destiny of this museum in exile, following the September 11 1973 coup d’état, in order to present the evolution of the institutional networks involved in solidarity with the Chilean resistance in the light of the ideological changes of the period and the challenges of the transition to democracy in Chile.

Élodie Lebeau is PhD student in contemporary art history at the University of Toulouse 2 Jean-Jaurès (Laboratoire FRAMESPA, UMR 5136), under the direction of Évelyne Toussaint. She is conducting her thesis in co-tutelle with the Instituto de Historia de La Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, under the direction of Alfredo Riquelme Segovia. She has been received as a scientific member of the School of Hispanic and Iberian Studies (Casa de Velázquez, Madrid) for the academic year 2019-2020. From a transnational cultural history perspective, her research focuses on the collections and the interaction of political and artistic networks developed around the project of the Museum of Solidarity (1971-1973), later known as the International Museum of the Resistance Salvador Allende (1975-1990), during the dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile, as well as the Museum of Solidarity (1971-1973), later known as the Museum in Exile during the dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile. She was associate curator with Charles Esche of the exhibition “Le Musée égaré”, as part of the contemporary art festival Le Printemps de Septembre at the Paul Dupuy Museum in Toulouse (2016). She published the article “When Solidarity Became Art: The Museo Internacional de la Resistencia Salvador Allende (1975-90)” in Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti (eds.), Artists, International Solidarity and Museums in Exile (Warsaw, Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej – Chicago University Press, 2018, pp. 325-341).