Jorge Romero Brest (1904–89) was the director of the Ver y estimar [To See and Ponder] journal (1948–55). He was appointed inspector of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes [National Museum of Fine Arts] in 1955, and served as its director from 1956 to 1963, the year he resigned to assume the direction of the Centro de Artes Visuales [Visual Arts Center] of Instituto Di Tella, for which he was a consultant.
The event Experiencias visuales 1967 [The 1967 Visual Practices] replaced the Premio Nacional Di Tella [Di Tella National Prize], upon request of those artists who had the approval and financing of Centro de Artes Visuales [Visual Arts Center] to carry out their experiences. The artists included were: Alfredo Rodríguez Arias (1944), Oscar Bony (1941-2002), Pablo Suárez (1937-2006), Antonio Trotta (1937), Delia Cancela (1940), Pablo Mesejean (1937), Margarita Paksa (1933), Ricardo Carreira (1942-93), Edgardo Jiménez (1942), David Lamelas (1944), Juan Stoppani (1940) and Oscar Palacio (1934). Most of these artists experimented new media, primary structures, and conceptual art; in fact, a formal investigation that turned political in the 1968 Experiencias [The 1968 Visual Practices] the following year.
This is an important document for understanding the impact produced by a 1960s seminal show. Additionally, it allows a closer look into the scope of the term “experiencia” [full-blasted experience, practice, happening and so on] in visual arts, in this case the one given by Romero Brest himself.