MO.CO, Montpellier’s contemporary art museum, presented “Museums in Exile” through February 5, 2023.<\/h5>\n

Jordan Elgrably<\/h4>\n

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When war envelops a country, as it has Ukraine this year, and did in Syria a decade ago, both people and their culture come under attack. The very definition of genocide, according to the UN\u2019s 1946 resolution against it, speaks of \u201cgreat losses to humanity in the form of cultural and other contributions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montpellier\u2019s newest museum, the MO.CO Montpellier Contemporain<\/a>, has curated a tremendous exhibition that commemorates the people of Chile, Sarajevo and Palestine, who have all endured hardships that include war, sieges, mass destruction of property, arbitrary arrests without habeas corpus, forced disappearances, mass graves, and exile.<\/p>\n

The beauty of these three \u201cmuseums in exile\u201d is that the bulk of their collections consist of artwork donated by world artists sympathetic to the plight of people under attack. They are as such solidarity museums. In fact, the exhibition might have well been titled \u201cArtists Against War,\u201d for the donated work forms an eloquent argument against violence itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuseums in Exile\u201d opens with a room devoted to Pablo Picasso\u2019s \u201cGuernica\u201d and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. Many who have visited Madrid\u2019s Prado Museum know that it houses one of the finest collections of art gathered from the 12^{th<\/sup> to the 20th<\/sup> centuries, but few are aware of the museum\u2019s efforts in the thirties to prevent the collections from harm, when the} Committee for the Artistic Patrimony<\/a> (Junta del Tesoro Art\u00edstico) sought to save art from Franco\u2019s bombing of the city.<\/p>\n

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No, painting isn\u2019t made for decorating apartments. It\u2019s an instrument of war against the enemy. \u2014Pablo Picasso, Conversations with Christian Zervos, Cahiers d\u2019art, 1935.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The trauma of the Prado Museum\u2019s exiled collection is conveyed in this first room, along with the story of \u201cGuernica.\u201d Painted in 1937 as a tribute to Spaniards fighting the fascists, the painting could not be shown in Spain until after Franco\u2019s death. You could say that the seeds of the \u201cMuseums in Exile\u201d exhibition were sown in 1939, after progressive Spaniards and their allies lost the civil war with Franco\u2019s fascists and Picasso organized, with Sydney Janis and the American Artists Congress, an American tour for \u201cGuernica,\u201d to benefit war refugees fleeing Spain. This was when a number of American painters first saw the painting, among them Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner, who said, \u201cPicasso at the time was one of my painting heroes.\u201d After \u201cGuernica\u201d toured the US, Picasso entrusted this masterpiece to MoMA in New York, which in turn loaned it to a number of international exhibitions. (You\u2019ll find \u201cGuernica\u201d today in Madrid\u2019s Reina Sofia Museum<\/a>, in the Sabatini Building.)<\/p>\n

It happens that while MO.CO was putting this exhibition together, Russian troops invaded Ukraine and bombs rained down on cities, schools and cultural landmarks. As of June 23, 2022, UNESCO tallied 152 totally or partially damaged sites. The Arkhip Kuindzhi Museum in Mariupol along with its 2,000 works of art were destroyed. So was the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theatre<\/a>, where hundreds were sheltering when the Soviet-era building was hit by two Russian 500 kilo bombs (Amnesty International deemed the attack a war crime).<\/p>\n

Before you walk into the large space housing the Chile collection, you first enter a room filled with the work of 18 Ukrainian artists, where MO.CO informs viewers that ticket sales from the show will benefit in part the nonprofit Artists at Risk<\/a>, which has hosted artists in more than 26 locations in 19 countries globally.<\/p>\n

The pieces loaned by Chile\u2019s Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende are mostly large and inspirational, and include work from over a dozen countries. I took the tour of the show with the museum\u2019s director Claudia Zald\u00edvar, who flew in from Santiago for its inauguration. When talking about “Museums in Exile,” Zald\u00edvar said, “I can’t stop thinking about the fundamental role that art plays in human development, especially in times of conflict and affliction of communities. Art is fraternity, politics, reflection and community, four words that we see reflected in the history of the Salvador Allende Solidarity Museum.”<\/p>\n

In 1972, Salvador Allende inaugurated the Museum of Solidarity. Following the 1973 coup in Santiago, Augusto Pinochet dismantled and pillaged the museum, which precipitated a mass exodus of the country\u2019s artists. A number of these artists came together, as artist Ernest Pignon-Ernest points out in the \u201cMuseums in Exile\u201d catalogue, \u201cto create a collection to pay homage to Salvador Allende and to uphold his legacy, denouncing dictatorship and alerting the international community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zald\u00edvar pointed out that Allende had succeeded in creating a leftwing coalition, which in turn inspired French president Fran\u00e7ois Mitterand\u2019s socialist victory ten years later.<\/p>\n

The collection of the Chile museum includes 1,700 works. Artists who donated while the Pinochet dictatorship was in full swing include Alexander Calder, Frank Stella, Roberto Matta, Wilfredo Lam and Joan Mir\u00f3. Artists who donated to the Sarajevo collection include Mona Hatoum, Andres Serrano and Bill Viola. Among the many who contributed to the Palestine collection are Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, May Murad and Fadi Yazigi.<\/p>\n

In his introduction to the exhibition catalogue, MO.CO\u2019s young director, Numa Hambursin, writes that, \u201cTo destroy the art of a country, of a nation, of a people is to take away their soul.\u201d He argues that the theft, confiscation or destruction of art has occurred \u201cin every war throughout centuries and continents, as have rape and slavery.\u201d And he insists that we mustn\u2019t delude ourselves into thinking that art is a luxury, something only for the well to do. No:<\/p>\n

[P]eople need art as much as they need bread: one is as vital as the other. One must not think that this is a commonly accepted idea. When the ancient city of Palmyra was turned to dust by the Islamic State with bulldozers and dynamite, some commentators suggested that too much was being said about it rather than of the suffering of the population. When Notre-Dame de Paris burned down, some generous souls suggested that too much was being said about it and that the money dedicated to the restoration of the cathedral should instead go to the poor. When the National Museum of Brazil in Rio and the 20 million objects it housed went up in flames, I heard a journalist saying \u2018Luckily, there are no casualties to mourn.\u2019 On the other hand, politician Marina Silva described it as \u2018a lobotomy of Brazilian memory.\u2019<\/p>\n

Out of the three \u201cmuseums in exile,\u201d however, only the one in Chile is presently open to the public; the Sarajevo museum, in a proposed design by Renzo Piano, is still pending construction, while the Palestinian National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art remains but a dream (see Where is the Palestinian National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art?<\/a> by Nora Ounnas Leroy).<\/p>\n

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Pablo Picasso's \"Guernica\" at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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(Chile) Alejandro Marcos, b. Spain 1937, \"Resistencia,\" 1974, synthetic oil on canvas, 134.3x190cm.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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(Sarajevo) Bill Viola (b. US, 1951), \"The Passing,\" b\/w video, 54ms, 1991.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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(Chile) Robert Forgas (France, 1928-1999), \"On n'arr\u00eate pas l'id\u00e9e\" (\"You can't stop an idea\"), oil on canvas, 100x100cm, 1972.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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(Sarajevo) Tony Cragg (UK b. 1949) \"Quarry,\" installation, 30 bags cement, metal crane, 1990.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Photograph in solidarity with Chile's armed resistance to Pinochet in MO.CO's Mus\u00e9es en Exil (courtesy MO.CO).<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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The four-year siege that desecrated previously multicultural Sarajevo cost the lives of over 13,000 people, along with the destruction of the city\u2019s National Library and Olympics Museum. The association Ars Aevi then mobilized artists and museum directors and curators to propose exhibitions throughout Europe, and art was donated \u201cto Sarajevo as a symbol of resistance to violence and of international solidarity,\u201d as Pignon-Ernest notes.<\/p>\n