After two years, the Borges Cultural Center reopened now under state management

After two long years in which it remained closed, the Borges Cultural Center reopened its doors with new air from this weekend with a cultural proposal that includes twelve exhibitions and various shows. From the 32nd Annual Exhibition of Argentine Photojournalism to the first collection of paintings of the National Museum of Fine Arts (which had its first headquarters in the Galerías Pacifico building), the four-handed project by Luis Felipe Noé and Eduardo Stupía, or León Ferrari's illustrations for Nunca Más, to the figures by Borges and Mercedes Sosa, there is a lot to explore in their pavilions. During the weekend, the recitals of Juana Molina and Liliana Herrero and Teresa Parodi also celebrate this reopening.

This is a new stage for the cultural center located in the Galerias Pacífico, which ceased to be managed by the Arts Foundation after 26 years to go into the orbit of the Ministry of Culture of the Nation. The closure of 2020 due to the health situation highlighted the shortcomings of its administration, which rented several of its spaces to sustain itself. Once again public heritage, the State undertook building improvements and, through the creation of the Under-Secretariat for Space Management and Special Projects of the Ministry of Culture, brought Borges into line with the Kirchner Cultural Center and Tecnópolis.

The articulation of these three spaces with the new undersecretariat aims to draw up a more integrated cultural proposal that functions as complementary pieces. “The idea is to have some similar criteria, but not necessarily to replicate the same curatorial lines in scale. The Borges will have a predominance of photography and will engage in much more intensive dialogue with the city of Buenos Aires. In terms of music, there will be more emphasis on a line in relation to tango and folklore, which are more specific niches,” Martín Bonavetti, director of that official unit, told Infobae Cultura.

Under the direction of Ezequiel Grimson, the Borges Cultural Center will bring together in its vast space of 9,000 square meters a diverse programme in which the exhibitions of the National Museum of Fine Arts and that of the Palais de Glace, the future headquarters of the Museum of Oriental Art, the specialized store of the Argentine Traditional and Innovative Handicrafts Market (MATRIA) and the different proposals by the Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Bocca, Mercedes Sosa and Luis Felipe Noé foundations. “This is a place with a lot of tourist influx and the idea is to also dialogue with that public through these bridges that are the figures of Borges and Mercedes Sosa,” added the nation's minister of culture, Tristan Bauer.

On the first floor of the cultural center, visitors will meet the exhibition Inaugurales. Sara Facio and the creation of the Fine Arts photography collection, which presents some of the first images that entered the museum's collection thanks to the work of the renowned photographer. The selection pays tribute to Facio's work as manager of that archive and in a way refers to both her style and the Borgean universe. In addition to one of his famous portraits of the Argentine writer, there are works by Stephen Althouse, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Claude Batho, Bill Brandt, Toni Catany, Alicia D'Amico, Facundo de Zuviria, Sandra Eleta, Eduardo Grossman, Annemarie Heinrich, André Kertesz, Grete Stern and Juan Travnik, among others.

On the same level you can visit Again, you ruined my drawing! , a project designed by Eduardo Stupía and Luis Felipe Noé that establishes an intergenerational visual dialogue between these two artists as well as with other drawings by Juan Astica, Delfina Bourse, Andrea Lamas and Paula Noé Murphy, curated by Cecilia Ivanchevich. Following these lines, it will not be long before reaching other related worlds of Argentine art that appear in the rooms dedicated to the work of the Italian-Argentine Libero Badii, whose collection will be presented in parts along with the preservation and restoration work led by the MNBA, and a series of collages with which León Ferrari illustrated in 1996 the Never Again Report.

The second floor of the Borges houses a vast room for the figure that lends its name to it. With a library and a reading area in the center, various realizations and interpretations are displayed on aspects of the life and work of the great Argentine writer. For this reopening, the focus was on the author's first stage, crossed by his active participation in magazines and cultural supplements and profuse in exchanges with artists such as Xul Solar and Emilio Pettoruti. An exhibition of copies borrowed by the National Library, photographs from the National Museum of Fine Arts, texts, projections and videos made by the Jorge Luis Borges International Foundation, trace the route, which also has a games laboratory. The same pavilion houses the 32nd Annual Exhibition of Argentine Photojournalism and Every Body is Political, an exhibition at the Palais de Glace that gathers productions by artists and groups that question the political dimension of bodies.

The exhibition Bellas Artes/Bon Marche also has a special space. It was in these same galleries that the Generation of the 80 founded the National Museum of Fine Arts, which operated until 1909 within the emblematic Bon Marche shopping complex. The exhibition invites you to learn about the first years of the institution through a selection of sculptures, genre paintings, landscapes and nudes that its first director, Eduardo Schiaffino, acquired on Florida Street and in Europe, or through donations, among which Alfred Roll's Woman and Bull and La sopa stand out of the poor of Reinaldo Giudici.

The third floor houses another large space in which Mercedes Sosa gravitates, with an exhibition curated by Álvaro Rufiner that reviews her career and brings together some of the characteristic garments she wore on stage, folk instruments, audiovisual images and music. Part of the indigenous universe reflected in his songs moves to Ayni, the show that extends to one side with photographs by Claudia Conteris, Flor Guzzetti, María Paula Avila, Guido Piotrkowski, Agustin Zamudio, Javier Goded, Erica Voget and Ber Greco.

This is just the starting point of this new stage of Borges, which in 2022 will bring Alberto Breccia's work to one of its rooms, pay tribute to Carlos Fuentes 10 years after his death and will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Martín Fierro. It also awaits numerous jazzy concerts and will host the Espacio Nacional de Tango Argentino, the Fervor Festival and the Los Barrios program in Borges, which will feature open calls, thematic days and music.

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