Global Art and the Museum

This May we would like to present Centro de Artes Visuales/Museo del Barro (Visual Art Center / Clay Museum – CAV/MdB) as MoCA of the month.

CAV/ MdB has developed as a result of several different undertakings through ten years of intensive work. The three museums that constitute the Center were born separately, and only later circumstances put them together in one building: a spatial complex where collections of both popular art (Clay Museum – MdB) and art produced by several ethnic groups (Indigenous Art Museum – MAI) are exhibited, as well as different expressions of Paraguayan and Latin American urban art (Contemporary Art Museum – MPAC), thus providing the visitor with a broad spectrum of the artistic visual production in Paraguay.

MdB – Museo del Barro / Clay Museum

At present, MdB owns more than 4000 pieces representing the mestizo production from the XVII century on. These pieces include wood carvings, weaving, lace, pottery and silverware. The museum also has a 300 piece collection of pre-Columbian pottery from all the American countries.

Some of the most outstanding collections that form the patrimony are the Kamba Ra’anga masks that were made between the XIX and XX centuries and were used during the festivity of San Baltazar in Tobatí, and Nativity and San Pedro and San Pablo in Altos.

The ñandutí pieces that are exhibited in the lace section of the museum were weaved with silk and cotton and represent the production from the XVIII century up to the present.

Among those, five ceremony pieces that were used by the ishir ethnic group as costumes for the annual ritual called Debylyby should be mentioned. The costumes – cloth and masks – are made out of caraguatá fiber and feathers from several Chaco birds.

Also remarkable are the animal-like carvings made in cedar wood by the ava (guarani) artist Ramón Duarte in Acaray-mi in the ’80s. These pieces are a present-day expression based on the carving of traditional seats (apyka) used by “shamanes” that were always made in cedar wood, since the cedar tree was considered sacred by the guarani.

MAI – Indigenous Art Museum

The collection in the Indigenous Art Museum shows the artistic production of the different ethnic groups that live in Paraguay. The items were selected with the purpose of enhancing their expressive value and form quality over their ethnographic, historic and technical references, which are normally the only values to be considered by conventional museums and galleries.

The MAI collection has more than two thousand pieces made by the members of the 17 ethnic groups that inhabit the country. It includes pottery and carvings, feather ornaments and weavings, masks and baskets. This collection has grown with many donations from the natives as well as from many others, including several anthropologists.

In the desire to privilege the popular expression of the works, the Clay Museum supports the self managed growth of popular forms.

Consequently, it accompanies the development of aesthetic manifestations, provided they correspond to forces emerging from the communities and represent the new conditions that characterize popular, mestizo, rural and suburban production.

MPAC – Contemporary Art Museum

The Contemporary Art Museum constitutes a summary of the evolution of Paraguayan modern art, and marks the essential points of its course.

MPAC has the only permanent collection of present-day drawings, engravings, mixed techniques, objects and sculptures in Paraguay with a patrimony of 3000 works that also include the production of Latin American and Spanish artists.

Although MPAC’s objective is to keep a record of the contemporary visual production, it has not neglected important moments of the local graphic production.

CAV – Visual Art Center

CAV also promotes the documentation, research and publication of texts related to different aspects of popular culture. This is done through the Documentation and Investigation Department (DDI) that works in the gathering and diffusion of expressions of the rural and native cultures, always with the purpose of emphasizing the pluricultural nature of the country.