The year after the Museum’s inauguration, the Rabinovich family decided to create a prize aimed at young art, called Salón Arturo y Rebeca Rabinovich, commonly known as the Salón Rabinovich or “los Rabinos.” The prize was conceived as a competition in the traditional manner of art salons, with the goal of stimulating and contributing to the training of young artists under 30, since the Museum recognized a gap in exhibition spaces for their proposals. The Salón Rabinovich was envisioned as a space for participation, dissemination, and promotion of artists in training, and was directly aimed at architecture, art, and design students from the country’s art faculties and institutes. During the decades the Salon was active, from 1981 to 2001, it underwent a series of changes in the formulation of its open call, as at one point artists had to be selected by their respective faculties, strengthening the bond between the museum and universities.
Under the name Salón Arturo y Rebeca Rabinovich, a tribute by Tulio Rabinovich, founding member and later director of the Museum, to his parents, the first edition was held in October 1981. That first salon had only eight participants and first place was awarded to the work by María Teresa Cano, Yo servida a la mesa, an edible installation in which a series of partial self-portraits in relief made with edible materials – custard, rice, tuna – was presented as a banquet for the viewer’s tasting. This work became an iconic piece both of the Salon and of national art linked to the body. Over time, some of the elements proposed in that work would become part of the imagery built around the Salon: a platform for proposals about the ephemeral or the question of the permanence of the work of art and its participatory nature.
Throughout its more than two decades of existence, the Salon featured the participation of 358 artists in techniques such as painting, drawing, printmaking, performance, installation, and video. Since the first prizes of the Salón Rabinovich were acquisition prizes, the Salon allowed the permanent entry of young artists into the Museum’s collection. The intention was that a “compilation of the best of young art in Colombia” would be part of the permanent collection of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín. Among the notable artists who participated in the Salon, which served as a starting point for their careers, are José Antonio Suárez Londoño, Nadín Ospina, María Fernanda Cardoso, Juan Fernando Herrán, and Fredy Alzate, among many others.
Exhibition record: 15 years – Salón Rabinovich, 1995.