Fear the Mermaid

Our favorite museum in Buenos Aires remains the aforementioned MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires). This weekend we went to see if the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes could compare, but we found ourselves a bit underwhelmed. Our guidebook promised works by European masters including Renoir, Rodin, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh, but neglected to mention that their representative canvases were, well, pretty weak. In the case of the Renoir, hilariously weak. But we dug the Manet painting and the Rodin sculptures, and saved the promising second floor––works by Argentine artists––for another day.

We did find the special exhibition––a career retrospective by contemporary artist Renata Schussheim––really entertaining. The faux-Egyptian beauties pictured above belong to Schussheim. My favorite of her works, however, was an installation in a separate room, involving a sculpture of a mermaid standing against the railing of a ship. There was a fan blowing, so the mermaid’s hair kept ruffling, and the room was lit to mimic moonlight on the ocean. I wasn’t at all sure what I thought about this piece until leaving the room, where I saw a girl of 5 or 6 pleading with her father not to have to go back in. Apparently the lovelorn mermaid scared the bejesus out of her, while the naked dog-faced women had no effect. Who would have guessed? - NSH