Space and landscape as curatorial criteria in the Open-Air Museum of Valparaíso

Abstract

In this article, the presence of a curatorial figure is studied in the Open-Air Museum of Valparaíso. Beyond the administrative dimension given to the position by the Catholic University of Valparaíso, responsible of the Museum, it is proposed that its ideologist, painter, architect and professor Francisco Méndez Labbé, was also curator of the project. This would be demonstrated in his interest in a relationship between the works and the link between painting and landscape.

To prove it, we will review key points of the route and archival documents about the Museum. Specifically, a series of sketches and a photographic record will allow us to establish relationships between Méndez’s proposal and the curatorship. However, we will explain that this criterion was not present among his objectives, and he did not realize that his conception of the Museum was in line with the approaches of contemporary curatorship, such as the relationship with space, interaction with works and a proposal of experimental character.