{"id":668650,"date":"2026-07-01T21:45:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T21:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/668650\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T21:45:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T21:45:11","slug":"leon-ferrari-exhibition-cancelled-in-chile-amid-cuts-to-culture-budget-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/668650\/","title":{"rendered":"Le\u00f3n Ferrari exhibition cancelled in Chile amid cuts to culture budget – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes<\/a> (MNBA) in Santiago, Chile, has canceled a Le\u00f3n Ferrari retrospective after almost three years of preparations. <\/p>\n

Ferrari (1920-2013), one of Argentina\u2019s most important artists and the winner of a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2007, was scheduled to be the subject of a major exhibition that would have opened in June 2026. The cancellation, attributed to a lack of funding, comes amid budget cuts under the government of Chile\u2019s new president, Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast, who took office in March.<\/p>\n

The exhibition was planned as an adaptation of Recurrencias<\/a>, the 2023 show dedicated to Ferrari at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The project was already at an advanced stage when it was cancelled in Santiago. Around 160 works were expected to travel to Chile, including some of Ferrari\u2019s most famous pieces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe exhibition was suspended due to a lack of funding,\u201d Varinia Brodsky Zimmermann, the director of the MNBA, told local press. \u201cWe had been working on it for about three years, ever since I became director of the museum, together with the curators Cecilia Rabossi and Andr\u00e9s Duprat (director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes of Argentina) and the Augusto and Le\u00f3n Ferrari Foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Le\u00f3n Ferrari\u2019s Western and Christian Civilization (1965) at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires Courtesy Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires<\/p>\n

Budget cuts were ordered by Kast\u2019s government across all ministries<\/a>, including a nearly 10% cut to the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage. The ultraconservative Kast has been openly linked to Augusto Pinochet\u2019s legacy. In this case, the funding cuts affected an exhibition dedicated to an artist whose work denounced authoritarianism, state violence, military regimes, organised religion and pacts of silence.<\/p>\n

Francisco Undurraga, Chile\u2019s cultural minister, commented on the cancellation in an interview with a local radio station, highlighting the fact that layoffs were not part of the cuts. \u201cUnfortunately, the necessary funds could not be secured,\u201d he said. \u201cPersonally, I have not discussed this matter with the director of the museum. Budget cuts unfortunately affect exhibitions, but fortunately they do not affect workers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey told us they had suffered a significant budget cut and that, unfortunately, they could not afford to put on the exhibition,\u201d Duprat tells The Art Newspaper. \u201cIt is a great shame. Everything was already in place: the list of works, the transport and insurance budgets\u201d, as well as the adaptation of the exhibition to the Chilean museum\u2019s space.<\/p>\n

Both the MNBA and the Chilean cultural ministry declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Installation view of Recurrencias (with Nosotros no sab\u00edamos at right) at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires Courtesy Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires<\/p>\n

The main work in the exhibition was to be Western and Christian Civilization (1965), perhaps Ferrari\u2019s most iconic piece: it depicts a crucified Christ atop a US warplane, and he created it at the beginning of the Vietnam War. <\/p>\n

Also scheduled for inclusion in the exhibition was Nosotros no sab\u00edamos<\/a>, a key work for which Ferrari collected newspaper clippings from Argentina in 1976. The clippings reported the discovery of bodies, people killed, corpses found in the R\u00edo de la Plata and other evidence published during the military dictatorship. The title refers to one of the most common phrases of Argentine denialism: the claim that \u201cwe didn\u2019t know\u201d, even though these crimes were reported in the newspapers at the time.<\/p>\n

Ferrari\u2019s criticism of violence was also marked by his own personal history. In 1976, he went into exile with his family in S\u00e3o Paulo. The following year, his son Ariel was kidnapped and forcibly disappeared during Argentina\u2019s last military dictatorship. From then on, much of Ferrari\u2019s work returned again and again to the ways violence is administered, normalised or hidden behind bureaucratic, religious or official language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA) in Santiago, Chile, has canceled a Le\u00f3n Ferrari retrospective after almost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,62527,6486,223902,19700,1120,96,10345,229,8419,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-668650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-arts-funding","tag-artsanddesign","tag-budget-cutbacks","tag-chile","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-museums-heritage","tag-politics","tag-santiago","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668650","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=668650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}