2 Salta Art Galleries and a Museum

This was kind of an odds-and-ends afternoon for me in Salta as I wrapped up most of the sights recommended by my guidebooks that I was interested in seeing. I still have all of tomorrow morning here before I fly out mid-afternoon for my next destination in Argentina. There’s not much else recommended, so I’ll probably just do some walking around then. I’ll post my last entry about Salta, which will be tomorrow morning’s entry, either from the airport or, more likely, from my next destination.

But that’s coming attractions. This afternoon, I visited a couple of Salta art galleries and a museum.

I also did a little more random wandering and a lot more sitting on a bench in the square because that’s what old men do.

Salta Art Gallery #1: Museo de Bellas Artes

If you’ve been following along these Salta posts, you’d be forgiven for thinking that almost half of the tourist attractions recommended in the guidebooks are across the street from the main square, Plaza 9 de Julio. The reason you’d be forgiven for thinking that is that almost half of the tourist attractions recommended in the guidebooks are across the street from Plaza 9 de Julio. The first of the Salta Art Galleries I visited this afternoon, Museo de Bellas Artes, isn’t. It’s about a ten-minute walk away.

The museum is small, with the exhibits displayed on two levels. The lower level contains contemporary art. The upper level contains older pieces. How old? I don’t know. All of the signage in the gallery is exclusively in Spanish. And I couldn’t see any dates on the placards next to the paintings. Even in Spanish, I think I’d recognize dates. But I didn’t see any.

One of the upstairs rooms was filled only with pieces by artists listed as “Anónimo.” I guessed that wasn’t a name, but rather Spanish for “anonymous.” Google Translate confirmed my guess.

My guidebook tells me that the museum has a collection of colonial-era religious works and “Cuzco-style paintings from Peru and Bolivia.” Yeah, I had to look up “Cuzco.” According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Cuzco school was “the group of European and indigenous painters active in Cuzco, Peru, from the 16th through the 18th century.”

Google Translate tells me that “Museo de Bellas Artes” translates to “Museum of Fine Arts.” I figured I’d find the equivalent of Argentinian old masters, possibly fine Salta art, or maybe even some old European art thrown in. That wasn’t the case; at least, I didn’t think so.

The contemporary art might have been local Salta art. I don’t know. My guess is that it was Argentinian, but not necessarily from Salta. The signage was all in Spanish, and I couldn’t even always match up the artist on the signage with the art.

That having been said, it was fine art. Not everybody has as advanced and refined an understanding of art as I do, but you know you’re looking at fine art when the painting in front of you depicts a lot of people haphazardly climbing trees. I think they were picking fruit, but it’s also possible they were up in the trees because they were maniacs. It takes a more advanced art expert than I am to discern that deeper meaning in the painting. (Yes, that description could apply to two paintings in the contemporary art section.)

Museo Histórico del Norte

Only one of my guidebooks recommended Museo Histórico del Norte. Because I’ve encountered a dearth of English here, one of the things that worries me about going to a museum in Salta is whether it will have English translations for its text.

To try to discern that, I looked at reviews for the museum on TripAdvisor. The first words of the first review I read were, “Sufficient signs in English.” The first words of the second review I read were, “No English translations here.” The former was from two months ago. The latter was from more than a year and a half ago.

I went in. Most of the longer-form text did indeed have English translations. But the placards giving details about individual pieces on display didn’t. The English looked like it was a more recent addition, plain text on a separate piece of white paper, while the Spanish often was on a different background colour, with a slightly fancier font. The English text being a more recent addition would explain the discrepancy between the two reviews. Maybe someone from the museum read the first review and decided to do something about it.

Salta is in the north of Argentina, hence the name of the museum, which translates to “Historical Museum of the North.” (If you want a little more precision, Salta is in the northwest of the country.

The history covered in the museum spans the time of the Incas, to colonial times, and up to somewhat more recent times. The earliest artifacts in the museum were Inca pottery, including funeral urns for children. (I assume those urns weren’t for the Inca children who were sacrificed. They didn’t seem to get urns. See my report on MASM in this morning’s post.)

The most recent artifacts in the museum were an old typewriter and a rotary dial telephone. So, they cover a wide chronological spread.

Among a great many other things, the exhibits contained a collection of old vehicles, including some old carriages that I presume were horse-drawn.

Text by the carriages told me that during the reign of Felipe II, who lived from 1527 to 1598 and who was, at the time, King of Spain (he also held the thrones of England and Ireland, and Portugal, at various times) he issued a royal decree prohibiting the use of carriages in his colonies in the Americas to curb the excessive luxury of officials. But the officials found loopholes and created carts, wheelbarrows, carriages, and wagons that didn’t fall under the decree. Where there’s an official, there’s a way.

There’s also a room furnished with authentic Portuguese-Brazilian period furniture, the period in this case being the 18th century.

The Museo Histórico del Norte is in a handsome old building that used to serve as the town hall (cabildo). And, you guessed it, it’s right across the street from Plaza 9 de Julio.\

Inside, there are two lovely courtyards, with exhibit rooms in the building around them. The exhibits are on both of the two levels of the stucture. On the second level, there’s a covered balcony that runs the entire width of the building and provides views of Plaza 9 de Julio.

Salta Art Gallery #2: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo

Does anyone want to hazard a guess as to where the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, the second Salta art gallery I visited this afternoon, is? Anyone? Come on. This isn’t that hard.

It’s right across the street from Plaza 9 de Julio.

The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo is even smaller than the Museo de Bellas Artes. It’s up on the first floor (one above ground level; they use European floor numbering here) of a building with not a particularly large footprint.

At least this one puts “contemporary” or, rather, the Spanish word for it right in its name, so there’s no mistaking its contents. It was definitely contemporary.

One room contained an array of symbols carved out of wood and just placed on the floor. I don’t know if they were glued down. In that room, there was also a video of an indigenous person rhythmically beating a drum and singing in tune to it.

I’m not sure if the other couple of rooms displayed a single artist, Roma Blanco, or if there were other artists as well. All of the signage was entirely in Spanish, and I couldn’t find many understandable placards beside the pieces.

There was one sign with a lot of text. It was cumbersome to get Google Translate to translate all of it because it required some panning of the text. But I think it was describing Roma Blanco’s body work. There was also a smaller sign just titling the exhibit. I had no problem using Google Translate for that one.

The Spanish is “CONJUNCION, TIEMPO Y COSMOGONIA,” which Google Translate tells me is “CONJUNCTION, TIME AND COSMOGONY” in English. I had to look up “cosmogony” (as opposed to cosmology). It’s the branch of science that deals with the origin of the universe, particularly the solar system.

The medium for many of the pieces in this exhibit was chalk on a blackboard. They contained mathematical formulae and charts that I think were supposed to be related to the cosmos in some way.

What got me confused is that, in one of the rooms, there were also some purely abstract patterns on a wall that looked totally out of place with the rest of it. I don’t know if that was a different artist. Or maybe that’s just the way the wall is permanently decorated by the gallery. I haven’t a clue.

On one wall, there was a series of three photographs of a woman in two different poses holding a bottle of water. One pose was repeated twice, and there was a second pose. In the two photographs with the same pose, molecular diagrams and notations were drawn on the photographs. Beside the series was a video screen showing the woman pouring a bottle of water into a large body of water—a lake or ocean. Was that part of Roma Blanco’s work? Again, I don’t know.

Well, that’s enough of Salta art. Catch you tomorrow.