Written Culture in an Art Museum. Objects and practices of the written word in Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez in the mid-twentieth century

Abstract

This article examines the social uses of writing in a provincial museum of fine arts on the Argentinean area known as Litoral in the mid-twentieth century, based on different contributions from historical studies on written culture. The interrelated study of bibliographic objects, ephemera, exhibited writings, apparatus and autographs allows us to identify and constitute different writing practices and artefacts as an object of analysis. From the study of a particular case, the article characterizes different typologies of writing and analyses their appropriation by a social group. These uses are contextualized in the light of the emergence of differential forms of valuing writing in the graphic media and in the institutional culture of the museum in the mid-twentieth century. The particularities of an art museum allow us to observe from a singular perspective the insistence of imaginaries that link written inscription with the expression of individuality and the preservation of illustrious names in the collective memory. The study also highlights the notion of written heritage, understood as a conceptual device that makes it possible to give a unitary and integral account of the written objects preserved in a museum.