31/07/2017

The dream of a museum for Gonchi Rodriguez seeks a new place

On February 9 of this year, the Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation came close to fulfilling the dream of perpetuating the image of Gonchi Rodriguez through the development of a museum that would bring to all visitors what the Uruguayan driver generated during his career in motor racing, within the framework of a broader cultural offer.

On December 22, 2016, a formal request for the concession of the Molino Pérez was submitted to the Joint Commission, with a copy to Municipality E and a representative of the Neighborhood Council 7, so that the initiative to realize the desire for a museum began to come closer to reality. In February 2017, the Joint Commission granted custody of the Perez Mill to the Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation as a possible site for the implementation of the NGO's project, a heritage building currently abandoned and with a totally vandalized facade.

The project presented contemplated, on the one hand, the creation of an inhabitable sculpture, with a light and reversible structure, separated from the heritage collection -where the Gonchi museum would be located-; the integral restoration of the building piece where the mill would be exhibited, and a calendar with activities open to the presentation of artistic and cultural proposals.

On the other hand, in addition to the installation of offices, the Foundation's community service would also be available, where Child Passenger Safety technicians would provide free advice on the correct placement of safety seats and boosters for the transfer of children. At the same time, a space was foreseen to provide training to public and private actors linked to road safety.

This project, which complied with the formal presentation process, respected and contemplated the heritage needs of an iconic building for Montevideo such as Molino de Pérez. To this day, this construction loses the possibility of becoming a reference point within the cultural and tourist circuit of the city, managed by the Gonzalo Rodríguez Foundation, due to discordances and resistance expressed through the media by a non-institutionalized group of neighbors called "Friends of the Molino de Pérez".

For the Foundation Gonzalo Rodriguez, the delivery of the keys that makes effective the liberation of the custody of the Mill of Perez, means to continue with the search of a new place to create an innovating, vanguardist and inspiring proposal as it was Gonchi for many of us. A place where the organization is welcomed by the neighbors and that the implementation of the project is valued as is the work done by the organization for more than 16 years.