The art historian and specialist in cultural policies is leaving her position at the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende after 12 years of management. To give continuity to the project, María José Lemaitre, until now coordinator of the Museum’s Archive, will take over the direction.
The Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (MSSA) informs that the director Claudia Zaldívar, has resigned after 12 years in the position, marking the end of a significant cycle for the institution. Her decision responds to the completion of an important stage in the Museum, added to the precariousness and budgetary pressure on the MSSA, in the context of a complex situation for museums and heritage in Chile.
Claudia Zaldívar assumed the direction of the MSSA in 2012 and during her tenure focused on establishing a coherent museum policy and a professional institutional structure for the Museum, as well as activating a significant network of national and international collaboration. During this time, the Museum positioned itself as one of the most important in Latin America in modern and contemporary art. The MSSA is today considered a reference for its exhibitions, research and public program, being widely recognized for being Chile’s first museum to work on artistic mediation based on critical pedagogy and linkage with the territory.
Among the outstanding achievements of its management are the construction of the collections’ storage facilities; the management of an important program of national and international exhibitions dealing with contingent themes, which have been a contribution to the history of Latin American art; the recovery of a significant number of works from the MSSA Collection that disappeared during the dictatorship and the donation of new ones. During this period, we worked systematically on the reconstruction and enhancement of the Museum’s history, through the publication of two catalogs raisonné of the Solidarity and Resistance periods, and the creation of the MSSA Archive, which included the recovery of essential documentary collections of its founders Carmen Waugh, Miria Contreras and Miguel Rojas-Mix.
The Board of Directors of the Fundación Arte y Solidaridad has expressed its recognition and gratitude for Claudia Zaldívar’s management during these 12 years, in which the Museum has achieved an essential presence in the museum, community, cultural and artistic spheres of our country.
New Director
As of March, María José Lemaitre Mujica will take over the direction of the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende. The professional, with 20 years of experience in culture and heritage, has worked at the MSSA since 2013 as coordinator of the Archive. From that position she has directed multiple projects linked to the systematization and dissemination of the MSSA’s Documentary Fund, as well as curatorial, exhibition and research projects linked to the Museum’s Archive and Collection at the national and international level, in addition to supporting the creation of other art archives such as the Carlos Ortúzar and Lotty Rosenfeld archives.
In parallel and for 15 years, she has supported and guided cultural institutions, artists and managers in the design, formulation and execution of projects with a cultural and patrimonial focus and the creation of plans that promote associativity and institutional sustainability.
The appointment of María José Lemaitre as director responds to the desire to give continuity to the Museum’s project through a professional with an extensive career in the institution and who has a deep knowledge of its history and the principles that are still valid today.
