By Aldo Padilla

The Chilean documentary Stealing Rodin (Robar a Rodin, 2017) starts from the idea of the presence-absence of a work of art, idea that emerged from the theft of a work by the French sculptor by an art student, which generated an enormous amount of visits to the museum showing the exposition. The thief posed that his robbery was part of a performance that showed that the absence of the work had an artistic justification, an effect on society which made it move massively towards the empty cabinet. “We don’t appreciate something until we lose it”. In the case of the Mexican film Museum (Museo), another premise is added: that something that one doesn’t know is lost can’t be appreciated.