PUBLIC GALLERY - Sala Eduardo Kingman


Children's art workshop in the main gallery

GALLERY -  Sala Eduardo Kingman (Eduardo Kingman Public Art Gallery) is in the reception hall of the Pablo Palacio Auditorium in the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana or "CCE."  The complex comprises one of two downtown Benjamín Carrión Núcleo de Loja exhibition locations, the other is the Sala Ángel Rubén Garrido at Colón and Bernardo Valdivieso Streets. The Kingman Gallery is just north of the intersection of Bernardo Valdivieso and Rocafuerte Streets, on the west side of Valdivieso.  Diagonally across this intersection is the recently restored Bolivar theater which adjoins The Museo de la Musica, both of which host periodic public art exhibitions.  The gallery is open to the public 4 to 6 pm, Monday to Friday.  

The Kingman gallery is named for one of Ecuador's most famous modern artists, Eduardo Kingman Riofio.  Kingman was a social realist painter born in Loja who first came to international prominence when he and Camilo Egas decorated the Ecuadorian Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair.  The theater accompanying the gallery is named for famous Lojano author,  Pablo Arturo Palacio Suárez, one of the founders of the 20th century literary avant-garde in South America.  The Kingman gallery's host, the CCE, is part of an international movement of cultural institutions meant to both preserve and make the arts accessible to the wider population.  The Ecuadorian "House of Culture" was the inspiration and final work of another prominent Lojano, 
Manuel Benjamín Carrión Mora.  Son of a poet and academic, Carrión was himself a renaissance figure working variously as an attorney, academic, journalist, politician, and diplomat.  In 1943, Carrión, with then Ecuadorian President Carlos Arroyo del Río, chartered and reserved generous funds to start the CCE after a demoralizing war with Peru in which Ecuador lost almost half of its territory. In Carrión's own words:

“If we can not be a military and economic power, we can be, instead, a cultural power nourished by our richest traditions.”

The Kingman gallery has embarked upon an ambitious program of 12 contemporary art exhibits every year, the majority featuring well established, emerging, and student artists from Loja.  The curation of these excellent shows are the the work of the Kingman and Garrido galleries director, Diego Villavicencio.  Diego, an accomplished artist, undertook this program in order to build a greater public appreciation for the high quality contemporary visual arts produced in Loja and Southern Ecuador.                        

Sala Eduardo Kingman (Eduardo Kingman Public Art Gallery)
Bernardo Valdivieso and Rocafuerte Streets, Loja Ecuador
Open to the public 4 to 6 pm, Monday to Friday

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