The Socialist group in the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council will ask the government group and the mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez, of the Canary Islands Coalición (CC), in plenary session this Friday, to renounce the project to install a Rodin museum headquarters in the city, a project that will cost more than 16 million euros to exhibit replicas of the French artist who never had any connection to the island.
Fine Arts of La Laguna rejects the Rodin museum in Santa Cruz de Tenerife
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The former mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and spokesperson for the Socialist group, Patricia Hernández, indicates that it is an “unjustified and unjustifiable” project of the mayor, and recalls the rejection that cultural professionals have expressed to the project, described as a “museum of do you copy”.
Hernández considers the feasibility report presented “as a work of fiction that is indeed worthy of a museum”, and adds that his political formation already questioned in the plenary session in November the number of visitors that are estimated to attend, which according to the report will exceed to that of the Rodin Museum in Paris itself, which exhibits the original works of the artist.
Another aspect that the PSOE questions is the lack of collaboration between the council and the cultural sector.
“Not only do they ignore the public by not calling for a participatory process, but they have also rejected the warnings from the University of La Laguna and have not spoken to anyone from Tenerife to find out the real needs of the sector,” he says.
In the motion that will be debated this Friday, and that Hernández has presented with the councilor Elena Mateo, the City Council is urged to renounce the project to purchase “copies and replicas”, and to use the money to “give more economic resources and human resources to the Municipal Museum of Fine Arts and to the exhibition halls of the city”.
In Hernández’s opinion, it is “inconceivable” that while the Museum of Fine Arts needs a waterproofing work, we spend 16 million on copies of an artist with no relation to our city.”
He adds that this municipal museum is not the only facility in which this investment would have better use, and specifies that the exhibition hall of La Recova Vieja “is falling apart”” and the Guimerá Theater has “serious deficiencies due to lack of maintenance “.
“Bermúdez must rectify because 16 million copies of a French artist is not the investment that Santa Cruz needs,” adds the PSOE leader.
Councilor Elena Mateo believes that it is necessary to approve an updated museum plan for municipal facilities, including the Museum of Fine Arts.
“We have to change the way we work. Our facilities cannot be a warehouse of works” exposes the mayor in the registered motion.
Mateo is committed to proposing in this plan a new policy of acquisitions and collection of donations, as well as the organization of exhibitions that seek to value Canarian artists especially.
