The Ernesto de la Cárcova Museum of Reproductions and Comparative Sculpture is located in the Puerto Madero ward of Buenos Aires, and is administered by the National University of Arts.
Overview.
The museum originated with a collection of reproductions purchased by painter Ernesto de la Cárcova in Berlin from 1905 to 1908. Most of these reproductions were based on works on display at the Berlin State Museums, including those of a number of ancient Egyptian, Chaldean, and Greek busts and bronzes. Returning to Buenos Aires, he displayed a number of these works at the Buenos Aires Centennial Exposition of 1910.
For nine decades, part of the museum and its adjacent buildings housed the post-graduate school of fine arts (Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes, Ernesto de la Cárcova). One of its kind in Argentina, this was a prestigious academic institution with a four-year post graduate programme in Sculpture, Painting, Printmaking and Mural Crafts. Several influential Argentine artists and art professors have been graduates of this school.
Professor de la Cárcova would be appointed the first President of the National School of Fine Arts in 1921, and from 1923 to 1927, bequeathed his collection of German sculptures for the creation of the Museum of Reproductions and Comparative Sculpture. The National School of Fine Arts purchased a block of buildings in the eastern section of Puerto Madero for its use. These buildings were originally built around 1900 for use as the Lazareto stables, a municipal agency that was responsible for the control of imported horses entering through the Port of Buenos Aires. They were refurbished for their new purpose in 1923, and with the support of the National Commission of Fine Arts, the Museum of Reproductions and Comparative Sculpture was named in honor of the academic responsible for its creation, and inaugurated at the site in 1928.
The largest single subsequent donation to the museum would be the approximately two hundred casts of Egyptian and Mesopotamian figures ceded in 1935 by the Juan B. Ambrosetti Museum of Ethnography. The museum was conceived as much for a didactic purpose as it was to exhibit its large collections, and many of its later works would be created by students in the College of Fine Arts. This latter institution, and the museum, were absorbed into the new National University of Arts in 1996.
Collections.
The oldest and most important of type in Latin America, the museum includes over 700 sculptures, all replicas of the originals made by die casting or copied from a mold taken from the original. Many are "first castings" of original works in the Berlin State Museums, the British Museum, the Louvre, or L'Accademia, Florence. The museum also maintains a library and an art print collection displaying works by artists trained at the institution.
References.
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