Thirteenth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

The Parque Cultural de Valparaíso, ex cárcel, in Valparaíso, Chile holds great significance in Chile’s collective memory and urban historical landscape. The site of the museum and arts center is situated on the same plot of land as a polvorín (powder keg) from the nineteenth century and a former prison, which was also used as a torture center during the Pinochet dictatorship. The space contends with its past, while simultaneously attempting to surmount it through the power of communal art. Though it has been nearly thirty years since the end of the dictatorship, contemporary images of Chile reveal, in the words of Professor Cath Collins, how “State leadership over the human rights legacy in Chile has in general remained notably absent”. While the Parque Cultural does not operate from an absence or a void, it has repurposed the space with new meaning and made itself a visible marker of this reality in Valparaíso’s landscape. Yet, what does it mean to reconfigure and reuse a building that is embedded with memory of trauma? This paper employs theories of spatiality, sociomuseology, and memory to explore the ways in which we can imagine and manifest the Parque Cultural de Valparaíso, ex cárcel, as a museum of liberation.