{"id":46160,"date":"2000-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/archivos\/46160"},"modified":"2026-03-10T08:34:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T08:34:52","slug":"el-complejo-de-los-museos-the-museums-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/el-complejo-de-los-museos-the-museums-complex\/","title":{"rendered":"El complejo de los museos \/ The museum’s complex"},"content":{"rendered":"

Autor:<\/strong> Jos\u00e9 Alberto L\u00f3pez<\/p>\n

Revista:<\/strong> L\u00c1PIZ Revista Internacional de Arte n\u00ba 249<\/p>\n\n

Hay muchas cosas que permiten distinguir a una revista cultural especializada en arte contempor\u00e1neo de aquellas otras dedicadas a la divulgaci\u00f3n art\u00edstica, algo que hemos tratado en varias ocasiones con anterioridad. No vamos a insistir tampoco en el tratamiento que hace del arte la prensa, sus suplementos culturales o los grandes medios de masas como la televisi\u00f3n. Una buena revista de arte contempor\u00e1neo es, por una parte, un \u201cespacio\u201d privilegiado de exposici\u00f3n de los avatares de la pl\u00e1stica de nuestro tiempo y, por otra, una fuente de conocimiento que va mucho m\u00e1s all\u00e1 de las modas y de los hechos meramente noticiosos. <\/p>\n

En ambos sentidos coincide con el papel desempe\u00f1ado por los grandes museos, cuya funci\u00f3n se halla, idealmente, m\u00e1s cerca de la producci\u00f3n y difusi\u00f3n del conocimiento que de la simple presentaci\u00f3n de espect\u00e1culos. Sin embargo, la masificaci\u00f3n de los espacios muse\u00edsticos, invadidos sobre todo por los turistas, ha contribuido en los \u00faltimos lustros a una lenta pero pronunciada mutaci\u00f3n de su funci\u00f3n, hasta el punto de que la valoraci\u00f3n de la importancia de un museo ha acabado por depender absurdamente de la cantidad de personas que lo visitan anualmente. <\/p>\n

Ciertamente, la mayor\u00eda de los visitantes acuden a un museo en pos de determinadas obras conocidas, como si de un espect\u00e1culo renombrado se tratara. Sin embargo, existen quienes buscan en el museo un placer que solamente proporciona el conocimiento, que requiere indefectiblemente un cierto esfuerzo, de la sensibilidad y del intelecto. Aunque ambos tipos de visitante son radicalmente distintos, cuentan de la misma forma en la cifra final, y son los visitantes insensibles, mucho nos tememos, los que suman el grueso de ese conteo. Basta observar el comportamiento de gran parte del p\u00fablico en cualquier gran museo europeo y estadounidense, arrastrando sus pasos con la mirada perdida saltando de obra en obra buscando la Mona Lisa <\/em> particular del centro que visita. Sin embargo, al parecer, a los museos ya no les bastan sus \u201cprevisibles\u201d colecciones, por buenas que sean, y, con objeto de escalar a un lugar destacado en la lista de los m\u00e1s visitados, se ven impelidos a competir en la celebraci\u00f3n de exposiciones. Muchas muestras son concebidas, de hecho, pensando en esa triunfante masa a la que en realidad no interesa el arte ni la cultura, pero que invade el espacio muse\u00edstico como parte del itinerario obligado de la ciudad, que le lleva tambi\u00e9n a visitar tal o cual monumento, tienda o cafeter\u00eda, tanto da. <\/p>\n

Tambi\u00e9n las estrategias publicitarias de los museos se inclinan cada vez m\u00e1s a un lenguaje que vulgarice el contenido del arte, en aras de evitar ahuyentar con su complejidad al espectador medio, irremediablemente ajeno, hoy como siempre, a este peculiar mundo, cuya comprensi\u00f3n y disfrute est\u00e1n reservados tan solo a aquellos que observan con atenci\u00f3n y que reflexionan sobre lo que han examinado antes detenidamente. As\u00ed, el terror irracional de los museos a convertirse en mausoleos del arte amenaza, inopinadamente, con transformarlos en serviles vasallos de una cultura de masas cada vez m\u00e1s fortalecida por la sorprendente agilizaci\u00f3n de las comunicaciones y la subsecuente difusi\u00f3n sin precedentes de todas las formas de, s\u00ed, la baja cultura de siempre. <\/p>\n

The museum’s complex <\/strong><\/p>\n

There are many elements that distinguish a cultural magazine that specialises in contemporary art from other publications that provide general artistic information, as we have noted on several previous occasions. Neither will we insist again on how art is treated in the press, in cultural supplements or in the mass media and television. A first-rate contemporary art magazine is, on the one hand, a privileged \u201cspace\u201d in which to expose the vicissitudes of the plastic arts of our times and, on the other, a source of information that goes beyond trends and newsworthy events. <\/p>\n

In both senses, its function coincides with the role played by major museums, whose purpose should, ideally, focus on the production and dissemination of knowledge, and not just on the presentation of shows. However, the excessive number of museum institutions, which are raided essentially by tourists, has contributed over the last five years to a slow but pronounced mutation of their function, to the point that the importance of a museum has ended up depending absurdly on the number of visitors it receives a year. <\/p>\n

Indeed, most visitors go to museums in search of specific well-known artworks, as if they were famous attractions. However, a select minority seek in museums a pleasure that can only be found in knowledge, a pleasure that inevitably requires effort, sensitivity and intellect. Although both types of visitors are complete opposites, they both count in the same way to tally the final number of attendants, and, in fact, the numb visitors, unfortunately, make up the most of this sum. Suffice to observe the behaviour of a good part of the audience in any major European or us museum: visitors walk along, dragging their feet and staring vacantly ahead as they journey towards the given Mona Lisa <\/em> displayed at the centre they are visiting at the time. Nevertheless, museums seemingly now need more than just their \u201cpredictable\u201d collections, however good they may be, and, with a view to climb to a privileged position in the list of most visited venues, they are impelled to compete by staging exhibitions. Many shows are actually conceived to cater for a triumphant crowd that is not even actually interested in art or culture, but simply invades the museum space as part of their visit to a given city, paying the same attention as they would to this or that monument, shop or caf\u00e9. <\/p>\n

The advertising techniques museums have embraced tend towards a language that popularises the content of art. They seem to downplay their complexity so as not to repel the average viewer, who is still inevitably foreign to this peculiar world, a world that can only be comprehended and enjoyed by those who pay attention to what they see before them and give some thought to what they have examined meticulously at each venue. Thus, museums seem to be plagued by an irrational fear of becoming art mausoleums and that fear, unexpectedly, threatens to transform them into obsequious vassals of a mass culture that is evermore strengthened by surprisingly streamlined communications and by the subsequent unprecedented dissemination of that same old low culture. <\/p>\n

Translation: Laura F. Farhall <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Autor: Jos\u00e9 Alberto L\u00f3pez Revista: L\u00c1PIZ Revista Internacional de Arte n\u00ba 249 Hay muchas cosas que permiten distinguir a una revista cultural especializada en arte contempor\u00e1neo de aquellas otras dedicadas a la divulgaci\u00f3n art\u00edstica, algo que hemos tratado en varias ocasiones con anterioridad. No vamos a insistir tampoco en el tratamiento que hace del arte […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[444,351,400],"class_list":["post-46160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articulos","tag-arte","tag-articulo-html","tag-lapiz-revista-internacional-de-arte"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48385,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46160\/revisions\/48385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}