Abstract

Focused on a space within the memory of the Arts, this article analyzes the National Fine Arts Museum (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes) in Santiago de Chile, built for the celebration of the Centennial of the birth of the Repu-blic in 1910. Three moments in our contemporary history are analyzed as reflections of this example of the nation’s cultural and architectural patrimony: 1973, 1980 and 2013. Beginning with a review of files held in the Council of National Monuments and our own ethnographic studies, the article presents a reading of the shadows cast by the museum and its collections of works of Art and delves into the collective interpretations of its ethos. The author’s thesis suggests that the shots fired at the Museum on September 14th, 1973 broke the halo suspended above the work of art theretofore so carefully protected. The ri-tualized distance that separated Art from the rest of socie-ty was broken, allowing Art to leave the isolation created by the heavy walls of the building. In an analogy that des-cribes the body of the building and the portraits of women cut down by machinegun fire, the article develops the the-sis that since that moment in time the bodies of Art will move out into the streets to show their wounds. From that day forth, the Museum would serve as a projection of and a blackboard for displaying the images and stigmata that the silenced bodies stamped upon the surface of its walls, its surrounding trees, its rain gutters and its doors