Milestone 3. The Espigas Foundation

The Espigas Foundation, a non-profit NGO (with legal status by resolution of the Inspección General de Justicia 000948/1994), began its activities in October 1993 with the purpose of organizing and sustaining a Documentation Center for the History of the Visual Arts in Argentina.

Among its founding members were Mauro Adolfo Herlitzka as President; Adolfo Miguel Herlitzka, Vice President; Marcelo Alejandro Lanús, Secretary and Juan Pablo Tami, Treasurer. They established as their main objective "the support of research, history and development of art, especially visual and plastic arts; the creation, support, maintenance and promotion of research centers, libraries, archives, exhibition halls, video libraries, newspaper libraries, slide libraries, photo libraries; education, diffusion and cultural extension, publications, book exchanges, restorations; the promotion of sculptures, drawings, engravings and prints in general; the creation of artistic installations; the creation and promotion of scholarships from and to abroad, public or private, and exchanges with such entities" (Minute Book No. 1, p. 4).

The design of a strategy for the rescue and preservation of dispersed documentary material, difficult to access and, in many cases, in a process of serious deterioration, made it possible to organize and classify the bibliographic and documentary collection of Fundación Espigas in a short period of time. At the end of the campaign, which lasted approximately one year, nearly 40,000 documents were collected and 200 donors of bibliographic material were incorporated.

In 1996 the Documentation Center of Fundación Espigas was declared of national interest (decree 1,242). "To preserve documentation is to take care of our history. Today's papers are tomorrow's documents" was its first and main motto.

1.Detail of Fundación Espigas brochure. Espigas Foundation Institutional Archive.

2.Espigas Foundation brochure. Fundación Espigas Institutional Archive.