Aesthetic Artefacts or Documents? Museums of Art and History in Late Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires

LAURA MALOSETTI COSTA; GEORGIANA UHLYARIK

Museum History Journal

Maney

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2016 vol. 9 p. 108 - 120

1936 9816

Argentina?s National Museum of History and the National Museum of FineArts were created almost at the same time in Buenos Aires, towards theend of the nineteenth century. Many of the artefacts collected in bothmuseums are of the same kind: oil paintings, drawings, engravings, and sculptures,depicting battles, portraits, landscapes, and costumbrista scenes.However, the artefacts in each institution were understood differently: thosein the Museum of Fine Arts were considered as ?art?, while those in theother museum were seen as historical documents. This differentiationbetween the material of art history and that of history deserves critical examination.The creation of each museum may explain this distinction, as well asoffering a point of departure for further reflections about the way in whichthose artefacts have been exhibited, studied, and preserved.keywords museums, art, history, visual artefacts, Buenos Aires