Introduction
Who Speaks in a Museum?
The exhibition Alive and Present: The Art of the Atacameño/Lickanantay, Mapuche, and Rapanui Peoples emerges from this question.
Over the course of two years, as part of the production of the Catalogue Raisonné for the permanent exhibition Chile Before Chile, Atacameño/Lickanantay, Mapuche, and Rapanui specialists and knowledge keepers studied pieces safeguarded by the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino. They shared knowledge, memories, and stories that had long been absent from our collection records.
Art historian Cristian Vargas Paillahueque, coordinator of the Catalogue Raisonné project and curator of this exhibition, synthesized these encounters, reflecting the vitality of the relationships between communities and the objects.
Alive and Present is part of a broader endeavor. As a museum, we seek to question our own institutional history, challenge the scientific neutrality of the narratives we produce, and advance curatorial strategies that recognize and make space for multiple ways of thinking, feeling, and naming the world.
We invite you to recognize that our present is woven from living memories—of a past that remains both present and future.
