Editorial: The logo of the National Centre for the Performing Arts

The change represents the replacement of a monogram inspired by 127 years of art visible in the theater’s ancient marble with a promotional logo created 10 months ago by audiovisual producer Christian Bulgarelli and his company Nocaut, within the framework of a controversial financing contract for communications services provided to the Presidential Palace by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI).

The attempt to merge the theatre’s identity with that of the government in power is futile. As long as the influence of government officials exists, it will continue, because no one in the future will consider preserving the artistically inspired design that has been embedded in the lobby’s marble floor since the building was inaugurated in 1897.

To be precise, the Ministry denies its disappearance on the grounds of the permanence of the emblem in the theater, but who would dare to remove it from the first building declared a national architectural emblem? On the other hand, this replacement occurs in the way cultural institutions interact with society and the world.

“The National Theater’s logo will not be removed. It will remain on the curtain, it will remain in this heritage infrastructure of the theater; this is just the first push in this work agenda,” said Rodríguez Vives. “What I want to say is that this logo cannot be eliminated because it is rooted in the history and architecture of the theater.”

This way of looking at the symbol suggests the need to preserve all its manifestations, both electronic and printed. Rather than adopting a government insignia that remains on marble, glass and fabric (which must be upheld while on duty), the symbol is part of the theatre’s identity.

The “work agenda” the minister referred to was the integration efforts of the various cultural institutions under his charge. “It’s not that there are 25 principalities and each one operates disjointedly. What happens in the cultural sector depends entirely on what the ministry does or doesn’t do,” he said.

This is a lame explanation. The Ministry’s task is to integrate sectoral institutions into cultural policy, but this does not require the elimination of each institution’s identity. On the contrary, these entities are deeply rooted in national life and if they are divorced from their specificities, they risk the loss of cultural heritage.

Nor do we understand how unity helps the work of “clarification”, or how the so-called “principles” hinder it. The ministerial reasons reveal an intention to centralize, not to coordinate. This makes the insistence on “only one Ministry of Culture” and the implicit accusation against the “principality” more understandable.

But cultural management rarely benefits from centralization and control, especially when the link to political management is so obvious. This reality, and respect for history, prevents us from considering the replacement of symbols as an insignificant accident. It is not a question of design, but of management style, of the understanding of the delicate tasks assigned to the portfolio and its role in stimulating cultural development.