Obituary: Sofia Imber, influential Venezuelan journalist

Sofia Imber, who turned a garage into the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art and became one of Venezuela's most influential women journalists, died on Monday in the capital. She was 92.

Sofia Imber. Picture: Getty Images

The former director of what was once among Latin America’s most important art galleries succumbed to complications due to old age, her biographer, Diego Arroyo Gil, told The Associated Press.

Imber’s television programme “Buenos Dias,” which she hosted with her second husband from 1969 to 1993, was a landmark of Venezuelan journalism and politics. She became famous for her cutting interviews with global leaders such as former US President Jimmy Carter, Israel’s Simon Peres and the Dalai Lama.

Social media was flooded by people lamenting her death. “Good journey, dear Sofia Imber. You gave us art, you gave us culture, you gave us an example of tireless work. That was your best piece,” humorist Eduardo Edo Sanabria said on Twitter.

In 1971, when Venezuelan authorities were looking for a place to display art, Imber famously said: “If you give me a garage, I will turn it into a museum.” Three years after, she created a foundation to transform an auto parts garage into the first museum of modern art in Venezuela. In less than a decade, it had grown to hold pieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Fernando Botero and many Venezuelan artists.

Imber, a critic of the socialist government established by the late President Hugo Chavez, was laid off as the museum’s director by Chavez in 2001.

In 1967, she became the first Latin American woman to win UNESCO’s Picasso Medal. She also received awards in Brazil, France, Chile, Colombia, Italy, Mexico and Spain.

Born in Soroca, Moldova, then in the former Soviet Union, she arrived in Venezuela in 1930 with her family.

In 1944, she married Guillermo Meneses and they had four children. The couple divorced in 1964 and she later married journalist Carlos Rangel.