Museo Barda del Desierto, an architecture of experience: conversation with Luis Camnitzer

Abstract

The Barda Museum of the Desert [mBDD] extends over a territory of seventy hectares, in the municipality of Contralmirante Cordero, in the province of Río Negro, northern Patagonia, Argentina. It is an independent platform for production, training and dissemination, which promotes transdisciplinary research and highlights the different methodologies of science, architecture and arts. Its perspective, as an eco-museum, is linked to cultural geography and its relationship with the social, community, environmental and territorial questions of the region. The mBDD seeks to provoke and promote the democratization and dissemination of contemporary, sustainable and art-educational cultural projects.

Within the framework of the incorporation of the work “The museum is a school” to the mBDD collection, during the period 2023-2025, loaned by Luis Camnitzer’s will and the Alexander Gray Associates gallery, New York, what follows is a conversation with the artist which began in the meeting of several questions at the same time: what challenges do museums face today? What about art? How do museums reach the collective sensitivity? What is important to point out from artistic practice? Can school exceed the limits of teaching? How do we inhabit the dimension of delirium and fantasy?