This text provides an overview of the history of the changes that have taken place during the past forty years to the ways in which artwork, artistic events, and the information about them, circulate. The article attempts to draw a timeline that demonstrates how the modern system for the display and circulation of works has changed in the city of Bogotá, expanding into a broader cultural context that includes strategies other than museum exhibitions.
Prior to the nineties, the circulation and exhibition of artwork was conditioned by mainstream and traditional spaces often sponsored by the government. In the nineties, a growing interest in change on the part of certain artists and cultural managers led to a diversification of the visibility of contemporary artistic creation with the opening of new alternative venues outside the museum circuit in Bogotá. A number of these venues would become platforms for major artists and for events that provided an alternative to the established notion of the art exhibition.
Jaime Cerón (b. 1967) has been active in three specific areas of the Colombian art scene: education, curatorial and theoretical research, and cultural management. Since 1995, he has taught in the art departments of the following universities (in chronological order): the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, the Universidad de los Andes, the Academia Superior de Artes of Bogotá, the Universidad Nacional, and the Pontifica Universidad Javeriana. In 1997, he began working at the Instituto Distrital de Cultura y Turismo, first as an advisor in the visual arts, then as director of the Academia Superior de Artes of Bogotá, and finally as the head of the Visual Arts Department. He has published a number of theoretical texts that have subsequently become important references for understanding the dynamics of art produced during the nineties.