In her article, “La Galería Santa Fe, una historia en tres momentos”, the freelance curator Ana María Lozano discusses the significant cultural changes that took place in Bogotá in recent decades and how this transformation made the city more inclusive and generated more interest in local art studios. She attributes these changes to the programs and activities that were promoted during the administrations of mayors Jaime Castro and Antanas Mockus, in both cases under the leadership of the director Paul Bromberg and the associate director Rosa Jaramillo. Lozano identifies three specific periods that contributed to the “consolidation” of the gallery, based on the role it played and the people who were involved. She stresses the support it provided from 1971 to 1978 to the “migrating” Museo de Arte Moderno that would later become an important center for local and international exhibitions, as well as the impact of the “cultural enclave” that was created when the Museo de Historia Natural and the Cinemateca Distrital were opened. The second period identified by Lozano is 1993 to 1997, when Jorge Jaramillo proposed structural changes at an administrative level—through the establishment of “autonomous divisions”—and in terms of the curatorial approach and the exhibition space. In the final period, from 1997 to the present day, Lozano describes the management strategies introduced by the Colombian curator Jaime Cerón, from the División de Artes, to achieve greater recognition of the Instituto Distrital de Cultura y Turismo, and provide a brief overview of the various programs, events, and competitions involved. Lozano ends by reaffirming the Galería Santa Fe’s valuable contributions to the visual arts at a local as well as a national level, and lauds its strategic alliance with other institutions to achieve its basic objectives.    

This article is clearly an important record of an exhibition space that has played a significant role for the last four decades in the cultural and artistic scene in Bogotá, not to mention the support it provided to the Museo de Arte Moderno during the 1970s. The wealth of information provided for each of the periods mentioned above makes this article an excellent source for future research projects in the areas of cultural management in the field of art, the origin and transformation of exhibition spaces, the evolution of art collections, and museology in the local context.

Currently (in 2010), the Secretaría de Cultura, Recreación y Deporte, a department of the mayor’s office in Bogotá, administers the Galería Santa Fe through the Gilberto Alzate Avendaño Foundation, where the División de Artes is responsible for organizing educational, editorial, and curatorial activities, as well as the promotion of research projects and residences for the local art community. For more information on the subject of this document, see Jaramillo, Jorge. Premio Luis Caballero 1996–1998 [doc. no. 1098466]; I Salón Atenas, 1975 [doc. no. 1094478]; and Arte para Bogotá [doc. no. 1130902]. 

Ana María Lozano (b. 1964) has a master’s degree in history and theory of art and architecture from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She was a curator at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá, and co-curator of events such as the VIII Bienal de Arte de Bogotá and Fotográfica Bogotá 2005. She has been a member of the jury at many events, including the third and fifth Luis Caballero prize at the Galería Santa Fe. She is currently (in 2010) the co-curator at the Galería Cu4rto Nivel and is taking part in the project Experimenta Colombia. She is a teacher at the theory of modern and contemporary art major program at the Universidad de los Andes and at the Universidad Javeriana. For more articles and essays by Lozano, see [doc. no. 1099366]; [doc. no. 1099606]; and [doc. no. 1130260].