On 29 December, authorities from Guatemala\u2019s Public Ministry (MP) arrived at the Museo de Arte Colonial in Antigua to demand the court-ordered relocation of 287 works of art. The collection had been housed inside the museum\u2019s 18th-century building for 89 years. The raid was the result of a local legal proceeding initiated by an undisclosed plaintiff who had alleged poor conservation conditions inside.<\/p>\n
A hasty two-week relocation, followed by the museum\u2019s closure, has raised concerns about the institution\u2019s future and the fate of its collection, which is now temporarily stored at the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura in Guatemala City. Six paintings, however, still remain in the shuttered museum building as they were too fragile to remove.<\/p>\n
The Museo de Arte Colonial opened in 1936 in an historic building that once housed the Universidad de San Carlos. \u201cIts opening was part of the government\u2019s effort to promote Antigua as a tourism centre,\u201d Johann Melchor, a local historian and expert in Guatemalan colonial art, tells The Art Newspaper. \u201cIt housed key 17th-to-19th-century paintings and sculptures by Guatemalan artists like Tom\u00e1s de Merlo and works by Crist\u00f3bal de Villalpando from New Spain.\u201d<\/p>\n
The building is owned by the city of Antigua\u2014a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1979. The city granted a renewable right of use to Guatemala\u2019s Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for the collection. \u201cThe agreement with Antigua expires in 2032, and we have not received communications indicating otherwise,\u201d Liwy Grazioso, Guatemala\u2019s cultural minister, said at a press conference in January.<\/a><\/p>\n Emergency relocation and conservation concerns<\/p>\n The court decision prompted an \u201cemergency\u201d relocation of the works, which continued until 12 January, when the MP shut off the building\u2019s security cameras and returned the keys to the city. But Grazioso sees inconsistencies in the proceedings, saying the raid stemmed from a \u201cunilateral hearing\u201d and that access to the case file has been denied. \u201cWe have requested an urgent meeting with Antigua\u2019s mayor and filed legal challenges against this decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Of particular concern are the six large-scale paintings still inside\u2014five of them by Tom\u00e1s de Merlo (1694-1739)\u2014left behind due to their fragility and now completely unsupervised, as the security personnel have been dismissed. \u201cConsolidation work is conducted in case we are forced to move them, which puts them at risk,\u201d Grazioso said. \u201cWe have requested a halt, but if the MP disregards conservation advice, it must assume responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n The court decision was based mainly on a report by the Consejo Nacional para la Protecci\u00f3n de la Antigua Guatemala (CNPAG), which the MP had asked to assess the museum\u2019s collection in May 2025. The CNPAG\u2019s preliminary report, however, noted that only ten works were in urgent need of restoration and recommended that it be carried out in situ.<\/p>\n Conservation issues are nothing new at the museum. \u201cThe works, part of Guatemala\u2019s most important public colonial collection, were not kept under ideal conditions, but they have remained in the same environment for 50 years,\u201d says Javier Qui\u00f1\u00f3nez, the CNPAG\u2019s Antigua conservator. \u201cSudden changes in temperature, humidity and ventilation can cause irreversible damage, as materials are vulnerable to abrupt shifts. For example, wood may crack and paint layers may detach.\u201d<\/p>\n The handling of the works\u2014many of which are key examples of Antigua\u2019s unique sculpture style\u2014requires a timely process, which is unlikely to have happened given the time constraints in taking them out of the building. \u201cWhen artworks left the museum to be exhibited abroad, they were individually assessed by experts,\u201d says Blanca Betancourt, a former museum director for more than 30 years. \u201cAll legal requirements were fulfilled, and they were packed under strict standards.\u201d<\/p>\n This issue is not isolated either. Antigua has seen the closure of other museums<\/a>, like the Museo del Libro Antiguo in 2021. And the historic venue that once housed the Museo Santiago de los Caballeros was repurposed in 2021 as the Museo Nacional de Arte de Guatemala, the city\u2019s only remaining public museum. But the closure of the Museo de Arte Colonial is highly unusual. \u201cThis is the first I have heard of a court proceeding related to heritage in Guatemala,\u201d Melchor says.<\/p>\n Recent events may also bear political implications, as the museum building could potentially be repurposed. \u201cThe museum was a community hub where students and visitors engaged with the art, programming and the venue,\u201d Betancourt says. As a result of the closure, the Bienal de Arte Paiz<\/a>, which uses the museum as one of its venues, was forced to relocate works to Guatemala City.<\/p>\n \u201cThis reflects a broader issue concerning Guatemalan heritage,\u201d Melchor says of the whole situation.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, uncertainty reigns as the Museo de Arte Colonial works await their fate in storage. \u201cThe priority is verifying the collection\u2019s conditions,\u201d Betancourt says, \u201cand hopefully its exhibition in the same venue or in another one in Antigua.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On 29 December, authorities from Guatemala\u2019s Public Ministry (MP) arrived at the Museo de Arte Colonial in Antigua…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,29676,151618,1120,96,52160,10345,229,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-407244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-closures","tag-colonial-art","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-guatemala","tag-museums-heritage","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}