Un-archiving the MAMBO: Revealing the Museum’s History

Article by: Juanita Bayona 
Translated by: Sol Irene Caro 

This section is presented as part of the research project Digital Futures in Museum Practices*, which explores contemporary museum practices with a special focus on the use of digital tools.

The Research Center is carrying out Un-archiving the MAMBO, a project aimed at documenting, cataloging, and digitizing the Museum’s photographic archive to facilitate its consultation and connect it with digital users. The photographic archive consists of a collection of photographs created since the late 1970s, thus preserving a fundamental part of the Museum’s history and the art worlds associated with it.

Before the work was done by the Research Center, the archive had not received the necessary attention, so the preservation and digitization efforts are crucial to safeguarding a material of such historical importance. The archive is organized alphabetically and follows three classification axes: the first and most common, folders named after artists; the second, curatorial folders of exhibitions held at MAMBO (for example: Art and Politics, 1974 or Chinese Posters, 1978); and finally, folders of other modern art exhibitions across the continent (Argentina Prize at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, 1978).

Photograph of one of the pieces presented in the Afiches Chilenos Exhibition in 1978 

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The archive mainly contains photographic records of artworks that were at some point related to the Museum, either because they were exhibited, are part of the Collection, or were under the consideration of curators over the years. It also happened that these photographs arrived at the Museum by artists who sent them as portfolios to showcase their work. To a lesser extent, the archive contains other types of documents, including press clippings, correspondence, artist portraits, and photographs of some of the exhibitions or social events related to MAMBO.

Postcard sent to Eduardo Serrano while he was the MAMBO’s curator.

After an initial review of 20% of the archive, it is important to start reflecting on its relevance within the institution and for the historiography of Colombian art. This archive, in addition to being a fundamental material resource for researching the history of MAMBO, is also a repository of names of artists from the second half of the 20th century, mostly Colombian, some very well-remembered such as Luis Caballero, Beatriz González, Feliza Bursztyn, or Jim Amaral, and others perhaps less remembered today like Patricia Bravo or Jorge Cavelier.

Photography taken during the montage of the retrospective exhibit of Beatriz González and Luis Caballero, 1973.

Portfolio submitted to the MAMBO by the artist Patricia Bravo during the 90’s

The photographic archive began to be assembled by Eduardo Serrano, who was the Museum’s curator between 1974 and 1994. Alongside this work, Serrano has rigorously researched the history of Colombian art and in 1983 published the book History of Photography in Colombia, which concluded an effort to recover and preserve the country’s photographic memory. It’s no wonder that once Serrano began his work at MAMBO, the importance of establishing a photographic archive to preserve the institution’s history was quickly recognized. Oscar Monsalve, MAMBO’s photographer from 1976 to 1996, played a key role in supporting Serrano’s early initiatives and helped safeguard many of the archives that now form part of the collection. Today, under the artistic direction of the Museum, Eugenio Viola has emphasized the importance of reviewing and digitizing the archive, a process that is currently underway.

According to Viola, “The digitization of our photographic archive represents a crucial step in the preservation and accessibility of our cultural patrimony. Through this process, we not only ensure the safeguarding of historical images that capture the evolution of modern and contemporary art in Bogotá, the country, and the region but also democratize access to the knowledge and history encapsulated in these photographs.” One of the main goals of Un-archiving the MAMBO is to create a network where researchers, students, and the general public can access the archive. In this way, the cultural and historical legacy of the Museum remains alive and within reach of people.

Now let’s look at a couple of specific examples: in folder 55 of the archive rests the resume and portfolio of Colombian artist Maria Elena Bernal, who sent these documents to the Museum in 1982 to introduce herself. Today, her work Espejo (1980) is part of the Museum’s Collection, and indeed, it appears in that portfolio sent by the artist, giving us insight into how the Museum has formed its collection over time. In folder 28, labeled under the name of artist Jim Amaral, we find a selection of photographs from the Invisible Flowers series, which includes 120 drawings made by the artist between 1976 and 1980 in which she created hybrids between vegetal and bodily elements intertwining stems, petals, and leaves with fingers, ears, and noses. One of those photographed works is part of the MAMBO Collection, so we might imagine that these photographs preceded the acquisition process of the artworks.

Portfolio of the artist Maria Elena Bernal submitted to the MAMBO during the 1980s. The artwork in the upper right corner is part of the museum’s collection.

Left: Invisible Flower 61, 1980, MAMBO collection. Right: Floreille 8, 1979.

Given the speed and streamlining of digital processes in recent years, it is necessary to have this type of initiative so that this kind of material also resides on the web, thus enabling more people to access it. For this, it is not only necessary to change the support from analog to digital but also to think about the appropriate tool to make the material accessible. Starting with this first article, Un-archiving the MAMBO will propose a series of digital content to activate and circulate part of the Museum’s photo archive.

Read the Spanish version of this article here. 

*Digital Futures in Museum Practices is a research project led by Susana Vargas-Mejia and supported by the New Frontiers in Research Fund of the Government of Canada [Anita Sinner PI, Cristian Zaelzer Co-PI, Susana Vargas-Mejía Co-I, Trish Osler Co-I, and Samia ElSheikh Co-I, NFRF-2022-00245].