The utilization of indigenous designs in the collections of the Museo Etnográfico at the University of Buenos Aires at the beginning of XX century: actors, activities and objects

Abstract

This article focuses on the use of the collections of the Ethnographic Museum during the first decades of the twentieth century, in a context of recovering indigenous “art” representing the Americas and local art, This event was also accompanied by the development of production spaces and tissue exhibitions inspired partly by motifs or designs of objects stored in Argentine museums. While the Museum arranged school visits and groups of university students and artists in order to record indigenous motifs from artistic pieces, schools and workshops of weaving led by Clemente Onelli were created. In addition, a similar program was developed by the Liga Patriotica Argentina which, through Loom Exhibitions presented annually indigenous motifs, both archaeological and ethnographic ones, taken from the ceramics and fabrics of museums, which were to be learned and reproduced by knitters from inland regions of the country