Twelfth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

This research is being developed for the Museo Nacional de Arte in Bolivia. It was initiated to provide alternative representations of gender, class, and ethnicity through the portrait collection we have at our museum. The goal is to show gender constructions through female portrait painting and portrait photography during the nineteenth and early twentieth century in Bolivia. Portrait paintings were accessible almost exclusively to elites’ due to the costs they implied during this time. Ever since the introduction of photographs in the second half of the XIX century in Bolivia, photo portraits were strongly influenced by portrait paintings. One of the most impressive collections is Fotografía Cordero in La Paz, a studio collection that was the result of three successive photographers who lived making portraits of all social classes in Bolivia, particularly popular urban women, between 1890 and 1945. My research question seeks to understand why were portraits so prevalent in art Bolivia during the XIX century? My main argument is that a long-standing prevalence of portraits can only be understood when we analyze national elites and their desire to perform their socioeconomic status to maintain their vulnerable but powerful social position. The argument is addressed through visual analysis but also through written texts that are seeking to reconstruct a nineteenth-century spirit alive in magazines, newspapers, and testaments.