Page 345 - Arte e Historia

Art and History
at the Banco popular dominicano visual arts collection
is linked to President Balaguer’s major public-works pro-
gram. Three museums, a library, the National Theatre
and the Gallery of Modern Art were built in a spacious
area with gardens, sculptures and fountains. The Art
Gallery was opened in December 1976, presenting vari-
ous collections such as the selection of E. León Jimenes’s
Contest awards, the monumental size sculptures «For-
ests» by Antonio Prats-Ventós and loans from arts collec-
tors such as Jesús Hernández and Franz Naescher. One
month after the inauguration, almost 40 thousand spec-
tators had visit it.
A contentious electoral process due to political de-
bates, intrusions of the military and the attempt of avoid- appearance of promoting cultural spaces. Casa de Teatro,
ing the transfer of power, did not prevent the end of the
12 years of Balaguer’s Reformist party. The candidate of
the Dominican Revolutionary Party, Antonio Guzmán,
was elected president and sworn in on August 16, 1978.
The ruler’s suicide near the end of the presidential term,
determined that Vice President Jacobo Majluta became
the president in 1982 until the next elections, which
turned Salvador Jorge Blanco into the third PRD presi-
dent during 1982-1986. The period was characterized by
internal party conflicts, economic crisis, the Internation- programming that includes a School of Design linked to
al Monetary Fund intervention, and street riots which
produced a violent outcome.
Joaquín Balaguer returned to power when national
democracy was starting to take hold, ruling a ten-years
term (1986-1994). His presidency was characterized by
some political tolerance, the return of large public works
constructions and the allegations of electoral fraud dur-
ing elections of 1990 and 1994. The two political parties
contending were: the Reformist Dominican Party and
the Dominican Revolutionary Party, already fractured by
Juan Bosch who founded a second militancy, that of the
Dominican Liberation Party.
In 1996, Balaguer remained president of the country,
although his government was reduced to two years by con-
flicts that ended up producing a «Pact for Democracy,»
mediated by the Catholic Church. The elections in that
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year faced the «PRD and the Patriotic Front,» an alliance
between the Dominican Liberation Party and the Re-
formist Party. Their candidate, Leonel Fernández, won
the 1996 presidency, ruling from 1996 to 2000.
During the last twenty two years of the twentieth cen-
tury, the endeavor of the visual arts shows increasing con-
tinuity with the emergence of two generations of artists,
that of 1980 and of 1990, offering the former an organi-
zational and militant collectivism that created interest in
critics from the media and the many galleries. The 1980
period involves the boom of the arts, which entails the
responsiveness of a larger market of collectors and the
the Hispanic Culture Centre, the Volunteer of the Royal
Houses in Santo Domingo, the Cultural Centre Ms. Er-
cilia Pepín, and Art House Inc., in Santiago de los Ca-
balleros, represent new spaces that scheduled different
activities, including educational workshops or formal art
education, like in the case of Santiago’s’ cultural centre.
In the 1980s, two noteworthy events are recorded: the
founding of Artists City of Altos de Chavón, with diverse
Parsons School of Design in New York City. The other
major event is the celebration of the First Symposium of
Sculpture of Santo Domingo, which brought together local
and international artists of the tridimensional art, working
in the gardens of the Gallery of Modern Art. The event was
supported by institutions like Banco Popular Dominicano.
University institutions are not alienated from art
events, nor the national government, with its biennial
and the Gallery of Modern Art. Neither the banking
and industrial business, which increase in various ways
the support to the artistic culture in general, establish-
ing foundations like the enclave of Altos de Chavón in
La Romana, and the Eduardo León Jimenes, in the city
overlooking the Yaque river, where the Bishop starts the
Santiago’s Cultural Plaza Project, in the center of the city.
Anthological exhibitions of historical or modern nature
and retrospectives are framed as a phenomenon with little