2 Córdoba Art Galleries and 2 Washouts

This afternoon here in Córdoba, Argentina, I visited two Córdoba art galleries and had two washouts. One of those washouts was figurative, the other literal.

The figurative washout was another art gallery I was going to visit. (Although, I probably would have eliminated one of the two I did go to if I’d gone to that one.)

The one Córdoba art gallery that both my guidebook and my walking tour app highly recommend is the Museo Superior de Bellas Artes Evita, or, in English, the Evita Fine Arts Museum. It’s housed in a former mansion and it sounded lovely. After I finished lunch at Paseo del Buen Pastors, I headed straight there.

Not the Museo Superior de Bellas Artes Evita

I arrived and saw a large black-metal-bar fence surrounding the former mansion, which was set on beautiful grounds with lawns and lush trees, including some palm trees.

The palm trees had limp appendages hanging down from them, with feathered ends. The stems of the appendages were orange, and the feathers were brown. At first, I thought it was an artificial artistic addition to the palm trees. I was eager to go in and take a closer look. Oh, yeah. And there was an art gallery inside to visit too.

But I couldn’t see an opening in the fence. I walked around the property, almost to the point where I first approached it, and there it was. If I’d just looked the other way when I arrived, I could have saved myself a long walk. Isn’t that just like me?

At the opening in the fence, there was a small guard office. Other than the door at the back, the upper half of the office was enclosed in an uninterrupted glass wall. There was just a small slot that someone could talk through.

A guard sat inside. He didn’t sell tickets or interact with people coming in or leaving the grounds in any way.

I walked in and the guard remained passive.

A lot of people lounged on the grass of the grounds, some with blankets and picnics laid out before them.

I got a closer look at the palms and convinced myself that the feathery appendages were a natural occurrence. I don’t know if that was true, but I was successful in convincing myself of it.

Oh yeah. The art gallery. There were a pair of stanchions on the walkway into the building, with a black ribbon between them to close off the path into the gallery.

I walked the short distance back to the guard’s office. Expecting a problem with English, before I got to the guard I took my phone and got Google Translate to give me the Spanish translation for “Is the museum open?”

I kept my phone out with that on the screen, but I started by asking the guard if he spoke English. I figured a direct, vocal conversation would be less cumbersome than a back-and-forth on Google Translate.

He didn’t speak English. I raised my phone, turned it toward him, and showed him what was on the screen.

He pulled an app or browser (I didn’t notice which) on his phone and started typing. When he was done he showed me his screen with what he had typed translated into English.

The museum is closed until April 2nd for renovations.

Of course, it was. I’m here. Today is March 21st. On April 2nd, I’ll be back in Buenos Aires to catch my flight back to Toronto the next day.

Thwarted, I went back into the grounds, sat on a bench, enjoyed the pleasantness and plotted what to do next.

I figured that, seeing as though I’d already prepared myself to endure art, I’d go to an art gallery that was nearby and was mentioned in both my guidebook and my walking tour app, but not as highly recommended in the guidebook.

I cemented my choice to see another Córdoba art gallery on the walk over there. Despite the weather forecast in the morning saying there’d be no rain all day and only some clouds, it started to rain. A nearby indoor activity seemed like a wise choice.

To help me get a sense of what the rest of my afternoon would be like, I opened a weather app. According to it, it was currently partly cloudy and not raining. Um, no. There wasn’t so much as an infinitesimal spot in the sky that wasn’t thoroughly covered by clouds. And it very definitely was raining.

I didn’t think it was worth looking at the rest of the forecast for the afternoon seeing as though it couldn’t get the current weather right.

I walked briskly to that other Córdoba art gallery.

Cordoba Art Gallery #1: Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio Caraffa

That art gallery was the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio Caraffa. I got to the entrance and there was no bold signage for the museum. I opened the door and went to the unassuming desk with a sign that said simply, “Recepción.”

There was no signage that I saw that looked like it provided ticket information or anything about what was on inside. It looked quite sleepy and I feared it too was closed.

I asked the two people behind the desk if they spoke English. They didn’t. I pulled out my phone.

As luck would have it, my question and its translation from the Museo Superior de Bellas Artes Evita about whether the museum was open was still on the Google Translate screen. I showed it to her.

She didn’t answer yes or no but rather asked me a question in Spanish. In the hope of letting her know that I didn’t understand, I shrugged and gave her my best confused look, which is more intense than the confused look that normally inhabits my face.

As luck would have it, while I was there, another customer approached the counter and he spoke both English and Spanish. He translated her question into, “Are you retired?”

“Why, yes. Yes, I am.”

It’s free for retired people and she waved me in.

Once firmly ensconced in the gallery, I checked my weather app again. It said that not only was it now raining, but there were currently thunderstorms. But it said that the rain should be over by the next hour. Then again, this morning it said this rain wouldn’t happen at all, so I question its reliability.

The gallery consists, I think, of about nine or ten small rooms spread out over a few floors. It is a contemporary art gallery, and as is so often the case in contemporary art galleries, the art was contemporary. Much of it was fully abstract art, but some of it was drawings of objects I could identify as humans, or whatever they were, but they were somewhat abstracted versions of them.

Here’s my unprofessional art critic assessment of the pieces in the Bellas Artes Emilio Caraffa gallery. They were okay, but none of them moved me. At my age, I’d prefer something that moves me because my legs don’t do as good a job of it as they once did. (I hope someone will pay me for that opinion so I can call it a professional art critic assessment. But that probably won’t happen.)

When I left the Bellas Artes Emilio Caraffa gallery, it was raining even harder. There was a covered area just outside the gallery, and I waited under it in the hope the rain would stop. While there, I decided another Córdoba art gallery would serve as an indoor rainy-day activity. I found one, Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Dr. Genaro Pérez, about a 20-minute walk away. A walk that I wouldn’t do in such heavy rain.

The rain didn’t stop, but it subsided to a drizzle light enough that I didn’t mind walking in because it washes memories from the sidewalk of life.

I hadn’t gotten far before the rain intensified again. And it started to lightning and thunder. I ducked under an overhang on a building. I pulled out my iPhone and did a Google Maps search for coffee shops. There was one just a couple of doors down from where I was standing. I dashed there.

In the coffee shop, I ordered an expresso and a pastry. I can gulp down an expresso in no time, so I needed a pastry to lengthen my stay as I waited out the rain. I haven’t seen any scientific studies, but I’m fairly certain that rain is fattening.

Lingering over my pastry, along with the fizzy water they brought with my espresso as a matter of course, the rain had diminished again to just a bearable drizzle and I set off and made it to my next destination.

Cordoba Art Gallery #2: Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Dr Genaro Pérez

The Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Dr. Genaro Pérez is a small museum in a funky old building from the late 19th century. Entrance is free for everyone, not just retired people.

I enjoyed the art, maybe because there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of it, but I enjoyed the building even more. The exhibit space is in small rooms on two storeys. The floors in the hallways are patterned ceramic tiles, but there’s wood flooring in the rooms. Both wood slats and parquet are represented on those floors.

There are a lot of white plaster walls, but there are also some off-white walls and a lot of dark wood on the walls as well.

There’s a staid, but handsome staircase between the floors, with dark wood banisters and a red runner along its full length.

The art is mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries and consists of both paintings and sculptures, with a few sketches thrown in. Very little of it is fully abstract (although some are abstracted) art. And the only reason I say that “very little of it” rather than “none of it” is fully abstracted is I might have forgotten some, but I don’t recollect any now.

I quite liked the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Dr. Genaro Pérez, probably more for the building than the art, but the art was nice too.

When I left the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Dr. Genaro Pérez, it was still drizzling, so I decided to end my Córdoba art afternoon, head back to my hotel, which wasn’t very far, and call it quits for the day.