/ARTS WEEKLY/VENEZUELA: Promoting Art by the Community, for the Community

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Yensi Rivero

CARACAS, Mar 21 2005 (IPS) - A multicoloured cluster of small, rundown houses on the westside of the Venezuelan capital serves as both the backdrop to and the inspiration for a project aimed at involving the community in artistic creation and appreciation.

"When I lost my son Marlon, the light of my life, it seemed like fate had shaken me with all its fury, life had dealt me the cruellest blow, and I was filled with a bottomless sorrow. Today, all I have left is the view out of my window," reads a text by Glenda Ríos, a resident of the working-class Caracas neighbourhood of Catia.

Her touching testimony is just one of the local artistic creations displayed here in the Jacobo Borges Museum.

Ríos and four other women contributed their reflections on the most painful experiences of their lives to "The Language of Mourning," an exhibition that grew out of a literary workshop held at the museum.

Involving the local community through participatory activities "has been a basic premise since this space was created ten years ago," Adriana Meneses, the museum’s director, told IPS. "We are open to everyone. But in order for this interaction to be fruitful, we not only have to build trust, but also maintain it, and that’s what we try to do through our initiatives."

With workshops on everything from puppets to poetry to crafts, in addition to employment training courses and exhibits addressing social concerns, museums like the Jacobo Borges strive to show the residents of the working class neighbourhoods where they are located another side of art.

Community participation projects generate the material for exhibitions, which in turn motivate other members of the community to become involved.

"Everyone is capable of creating. Every human being has a talent. Today the residents of this community know this is an active place, and that they can really get a lot out of seeing a good exhibit. At the beginning, though, they didn’t want a museum," she noted.

"What good will it do my kids to have a museum, or to look at a painting on the wall? I think they should build a sports complex instead." This was the kind of comment Meneses heard repeatedly before the Jacobo Borges was established.

Although there are no exact figures on the number of visitors the museum has received, "there is still a very high percentage of residents who have never come in, out of the millions who live in this area," she acknowledged.

"But this is slow, gradual work. That’s why we decided to open up the museum for different kinds of community meetings, to get people through the doors," she added.

Similar challenges face the Alejandro Otero Museum, located in another densely populated working-class district in southwest Caracas. "A lot of people didn’t even know it existed. Some thought it was an extension of the racetrack (next door), and others thought it was a bank," said the museum’s director, Nelson Oyarzábal.

One of the strategies used to promote greater community participation was closer cooperation with neighbourhood schools. "We also have programmes for senior citizens, as well as a children’s club and a group of Boy Scouts," he noted.

The number of visitors to the museum has risen considerably over the last few years, reaching roughly 250,000 a year, said Oyarzábal.

"What we have done is to provide more support for the initiatives of community organisations, which now use the museum for their activities," he said.

The integration of museums into the fabric of the surrounding communities has also given rise to projects with a significant social impact.

One example is the "Trojan Horse" initiative, undertaken in 1996 to contribute to the rehabilitation of inmates in the country’s most dangerous prison, located next to the Jacobo Borges Museum at the time, but torn down a year later.

The project was aimed at providing more humane treatment for the prisoners, improving its facilities, and offering educational and crafts programmes, with the participation of well-known artists. Although the programme was short-lived, said Meneses, the museum’s efforts to have the prison moved elsewhere yielded valuable experience and positive results.

"The community was grateful to us for having interceded – through words and through art – in having the jail removed from where it was, since it was next to a park where parents take their children to play at all hours of the day and night," she noted.

Another particularly innovative project was organised by the Arturo Michelena Museum in the working-class community of La Pastora, north of Caracas. Young artists were recruited by the museum’s directors to paint mural-sized reproductions of the masterpieces housed in the museums on neighbourhood walls, effectively turning every passer-by into a member of the viewing public.

While programmes like this place special emphasis on the social function of museums, others stress the contribution they can make in the academic sphere.

"In a city that is constantly growing and has an abundance of private galleries, museums should essentially play a different role. They should be devoted to research, to knowledge, to the acquisition of works that can enrich the country’s cultural wealth," said Francisco Da Antonio, director of the National Art Gallery.

Da Antonio also thinks it is important for the government to encourage museum patronage. "On more than one occasion, I’ve asked the president (Hugo Chávez), who has such a huge audience through his Sunday radio and TV show Aló Presidente, to tell people to visit museums," he said.

The National Art Gallery is currently visited by between 24,000 and 30,000 people a month, numbers that da Antonio views as modest. "There needs to be a government policy to promote interest in museums," he stressed.