ABSTRACT
Art Academies in Ecuador have their modern origin in sponsorship from civil society organizations which, in the mid-19th century, not only salaried the teachers but were active agents in the negotiations with the state, be it local or central, from whom they demanded spaces and materials. At different moments during the second half of the century, the state participated in the construction of an artistic field through a series of policies, legislation, scholarships, and infrastructure, which resulted in the creation of academies. This process of institutionalization and the subsequent professionalization of the art field developed alongside of the continued activity of family artistic workshops, a legacy of colonial times. Evidence of tensions between both spaces appears in documents that come from historical archives which show that some artists not only produced in workshops but were also hired by the state as teachers or directors of an academy. By the early 20th-century art academies were sustained by the government but certainly through the actions and negotiations of individuals who brought a cultural project that invigorated the whole artistic field and projected it to national dimensions.
By exploring how formal art education was established in Quito during the period from the second half of the 19th century to the first quarter of the 20th, I want to look into the emergence of a modern system of the arts in Ecuador. I am interested in responding to the following questions: What pedagogical methodologies, materials, and techniques were introduced? What were the consequences of the bureaucratic demands of directing an art school on the figure of the artist and their art production? What were the processes through which this managerial practice evolved into a professional one? How did the new model of art training contribute to new art concepts, practices, and more generally to the cultural field in relation to the project of nation state building?
