Gilberto Mariotti & Martin Grossmann, Museum Art Today
Today there are at least two main references for the discussion of museological institutions: Adorno’s fundamental essay ‘Valéry Proust Museum’ and the equally important ‘Imaginary Museum’ by Malraux. Both narrate the occurrence of de-contextualisations which made new meanings available to perception and thought. Adorno examines Valéry’s uneasy account of the reconfiguration of the art museum experience, in the face of a ban on the use of walking sticks whilst walking around the artworks, now displayed to the visitor in a non-mysterious manner. Malraux points out new possible interpretations opened by the photographic gaze, from the photographer’s intention to the simple reproduction of the museum’s artworks.
This selection of articles, interviews and transcriptions also derives from a sort of de-contextualisation. The virtual space of Fórum Permanente’s website – where the articles compiled in this collection used to interact – provided us with passages that triggered relationships in the constant re-edition and re-alignment of their contents, which, in fact, no longer correspond to the full version of each text.
This takes us to Lina Bo Bardi’s initial proposition for the MASP (São Paulo Museum of Art), whose original configuration has lost its character. This confirms the relevance in choosing Marcelo Ferraz’s The Idea of a Museum as the departure point for the book. An international landmark on the periphery of Eurocentrism, in the same way as a plethora of manifestations considered impertinent at the time and which have now been given a new value and inserted into a possible history, this museum’s architecture and radical display suggest a dialogical contextualisation of this cultural apparatus in the city and the empowering of the visitor as possible strategies for the museum’s social action. Not as obligation but as aspiration.
We have consulted Jean Galard, Marcelo Araújo, Paulo Sérgio Duarte and Fernando Cocchiarale – major spokesmen of the Brazilian art system – about their thoughts regarding the art museum today in Brazil, the possibility of imagining an Ideal Museum and the aspects that could be materialised. Further on, we have transcribed a historical and insightful event – which took place in September 2004 – around the Challenges for the Art Museum in Brazil in the 21st Century. The event was a roundtable discussion with the participation of Paulo Herkenhoff, Moacir dos Anjos, Paulo Sérgio Duarte and Marcelo Araújo, representing the Museum of Fine Art of Rio de Janeiro, the Museum of Modern Art in Recife, the Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre and the Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo.
Further on, we have two articles that examine the relationships between art making and the museum through different perspectives: one from the point of view of contemporary architectural thought, The Architecture of Contemporary Museums as Agents of the Art System by David Moreno Sperling; and another, Perspectives for the Museum of the 21st Century by Ricardo Basbaum, from the point of view of the artist as an agent.
Finally, the book proposes a discussion on the Museum as Interface, incorporating anti-museum strategies, as well as other cultural practices, both institutional, such as those of cultural centres, and experimental, such as those of laboratory-museums of the 1960s and 1970s. And also proposals that put into practice virtual initiatives.
Thus, a configuration – which these articles are subject to – is materialised; however the many possibilities of interpretation are not lost. It is up to the reader to find ways through the various moments contained in the articles by re-articulating the passages in the edited content and in the space of the book, something similar to that which is expected from a museum experience.
