Mission
First in our field, Museo de Arte Publico supports artists and the arts exhibiting high impact contemporary artworks in public spaces in and around Antigua Guatemala’s number one destination city providing local and global viewers of all backgrounds equal access to interact, engage, and experience diverse forward thinking free exhibitions of art in outdoor and urban environments.
Museo de Arte Publico Antigua has 501(c) 3 non for profit fiscal sponsorship through partnership with UNESCO and The New Roots Foundation and relies on the contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations to support the development of our groundbreaking work presenting art in public spaces.
History
While many artists, galleries, and museums around the world are struggling to reach their audiences and viewers, Museo de Arte Publico has been working the past two years towards building public exhibitions giving us the advantage of being pre-positioned to meet the times. As a bold new way to bring fine art collections to a greater public, we hope we are setting an example for the future of Central America using innovative ground level socially minded solutions to propel a national creative industry with a global reach through new accessible to all technologies that allow us to bring art to everyone.
MaPA Founder Emily Hassell dedicated over 26 years to international aid in the development and formation of social assistance initiatives for diverse vulnerable communities including the elderly, special needs, substance addictions, youth, and the homeless. As an artist and director, her interest in the cultural development of art and public spaces has lead her to be a part of a historic post-war change in contemporary art in Guatemala as one of the original resident co-founder participants of the famous La Casa Bizarra ('95-97). She founded the ephemeral artists in residence programs Casa 0-27 ('00-03) where she worked with iconic contemporary artist Anibal Lopez known as A-1 53167 and other peer post-war artists and creatives including Regina Jose Galindo.
In the US she co-founded the Experimental Artists Collective, Gallery 345, and Studio 444 where she had the opportunity to connect with Anina Nosei, and Gerard Malanga who shared a similar experience in New York of being at the forefront of the arts in a country. In 2016 she moved back to Guatemala to Antigua to find the representation of the Arts and Culture in the city had been overlooked and undeveloped for over 40 years.
"While attention had been focused the past 20 years on the nation’s capital city, private investors, as well as the national and international governments had not taken into consideration the potential of Antigua to become the shining star of Guatemala- as a top-ranking, international world-class Museum City. Millions of visitors come here and unbelievably there has been no public representation of artists and the country's art? Most international visitors don't go to Guatemala city, for the most part (where there is a good art scene), except to and from the airport. Over 80% of the people who live and work in Antigua live in the surrounding townships in poverty, so how do you combine these two factors from an arts perspective was my question."
Hassell noticed although there was high interest surrounding the importance of Arts and Culture there had been no Cultural Affairs representative, coordinator, department, nor entity with the ability to create a functioning Public Culture & Arts Sector infrastructure.
In 2017 she founded the Alliance for Development of Contemporary Art as a collaborative initiative with Willy Posadas Founder of Antigua Viva, Jean-Marc Vayssier Founder of Nim Palow, Mitchell Denburg Founder of New Roots Foundation/Nueva Fabrica, Manuel Morillo Founder of Casa del Mango, Alejandra Giron and Jemax Luna Founders of Iluminart Producciones, UNESCO (and others), bringing together entrepreneurs, innovators, creatives, artists, cultural and arts venues, and entities to begin to work as a united front. Shortly after a simplified version of the Alliance came about as the Museum of Public Art Antigua.
In 2017 UNESCO endorsed the programs and the past two years the MaPA team has been working together on an extensive, fully integrated, permanent, public arts sector platform base structure- As an immediate socially inclusive joint effort to start transforming Antigua into an international public museum City to internally boost and benefit the local and national economy with a commitment to long-term solutions and social well being.
Flexible organic growth is essential. MaPAs development is interactive with the community and remains open to be able to include not only its own progress but also take into consideration the progress of others around as well. Including real-time feedback means progress goes at a slower speed but more importantly assures development simultaneously corresponds, responds, aligns, and incorporates the city’s overall new infrastructure changes toward being host, as a united vibrant thriving number one Central American international destination city.