Embodied Institutions

IRINA PODGORNY

Rio de Janeiro

Congreso; 34th Conferência Anual do Comitê Internacional de Museus de Ciência e tecnologia do Conselho Internacional de Museus - ICOM.; 2006

MAST

This paper wants to analyze this opposition by tackling the case of Latin American public museums of the late 19th century.  I will refer to Museo de La Plata, established in 1884 as the general museum of the new capital of the Province on Buenos Aires. It was the result of multiple negotiations with the government proceeded by the Argentinean Francisco P. Moreno (1852-1919). Moreno wrote several autobiographical narratives where he bounded his life to the destiny of his anthropological and natural history collections. He also wrote the document by which he “donated” himself and his objects to the Province of Buenos Aires to constitute a museum under his perpetual directorship. In the early 20th Century, the institutional history of the museums adopted Moreno’s narrative as constitutive of its historiography. In the first part of this paper I will sketch Moreno’s biography, underlining the tropes that he used for linking his own development to the consolidation of the museum. I will also mention the criticism by Moreno’s contemporaries to his management of the museum and to the scientific mission he undertook - both as individual and scientific administrator. The second part will analyze the consolidation of Moreno’s character as a symbolic icon of the Argentine Right movements of the 1920s and 1930s. Moreno’s example enlightens the argument that 19th century institutions were also rooted in the individual and personal domains.