From left to right: Jamile Coelho, Cintia Maria, Marion Jackson, Barbara Cervenka and Paula Santos

Celebrated as the largest repatriation of a single batch of artworks in Brazilian history, the Con/Vida collection, containing 666 works by Afro-Brazilian artists, arrived at the National Museum of Afro-Brazilian Culture (Muncab) in Salvador on February 26th. The collection was privately owned and was formed over a decade through the admirable work of two American educators: Barbara Cervenka and historian Marion Jackson. Sadly, Barbara Cervenka died two days after the donation, on January 28th, at the age of 86, in Adrian, Michigan, in the United States. She suffered from cancer.

The Museum considered the donation an act of counter-colonial resistance and a “historic gesture of restitution, symbolic reparation, and strengthening of Black cultural memory in the country.” Among the artists whose works are part of the collection are fundamental names in Afro-Brazilian production, such as J. Cunha, Goya Lopes, Zé Adário, Lena da Bahia, Raimundo Bida, Sol Bahia, Manoel Bonfim, and many others, encompassing different generations, territories, and artistic languages. The collection comprises paintings, sculptures, photographs, woodcuts, sacred art, engravings, and prints.

The artworks arrived in Salvador on January 12th, following a complex international logistical process involving specialized packaging, adaptation to museum conservation standards, customs procedures, and specialized technical transport, with the support of the Federal Revenue Customs in Salvador. Since then, the collection has been incorporated into the Muncab museum, where it is undergoing technical museological procedures. The initiative was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture (MinC) and Petrobras, through the National Culture Fund and the Law of Incentive to Culture. The action also has a partnership with the Municipal Secretariat of Culture and Tourism of Salvador (Secult Salvador) and foresees, in its next stages, artistic training programs, educational actions, and strategies for public dissemination of the collection, to broaden society's access to this heritage. Maintained by Petrobras, MUNCAB relied on the partnership of the Ibirapitanga Institute for the repatriation, which provided essential prior resources for the international operation of returning the artworks to the country.

American historian Marion Jackson, also known as Mame Jackson, PhD from the University of Michigan and professor, spoke with ARTE! Brazilians spoke about what led her and Barbara to start the collection and, finally, 34 years later, to donate everything to a Brazilian museum. She and Barbara, on their many trips to Brazil, frequently visited the Afro-Brazilian Museum in Ibirapuera and even met the Bahian curator Emanuel Araújo, who encouraged them in their research. They also tried to arrange a meeting between Emanuel and Juanita Moore, director of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History. Unfortunately, on the day they arrived in São Paulo with Juanita, he had recently passed away. They also sought advice from the French ethnologist Pierre Verger (1902-1996), who was still living in Salvador, and the legendary artist Mestre Didi (1917-2013).

Art! ✱ – Why did you start an art collection with the intention of mapping Afro-Brazilian production?

Marion Jackson – We didn't start with an intention. We didn't even think about it. We started because of a personal interest. Both Barbara and I were interested in the relationship between culture, art, and history, and particularly in the experience of African American culture and art. And this occurs broadly in the Americas, both in North America and South America. And we noticed, in our initial research, the strong African influence in Brazil. This is something little known in North America. And we were intrigued and wanted to experience something like that. So, our first trip to Brazil, in 1992, was motivated by a personal interest. We were interested in learning more about the interesting Brazilian popular culture. And then, as we became familiar with it through that first trip and our relationship with people, particularly at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), we wanted to go back. We wanted to share this experience with other people in North America who, like us, were very uninformed initially. Well, this led us to return to Brazil, year after year, gradually assembling, piece by piece, artist by artist, a collection, a growing collection, and we shared this collection through small exhibitions. The first of these, in the 1990s, were quite modest.

Where did they display the artworks they were acquiring in Brazil?

We displayed them in a workplace, it wasn't even a gallery, we simply placed the artworks on podiums or pedestals. But gradually, we began working with small galleries and museums throughout the country, through friends we had. I was teaching at a Canadian university during part of that period, and Barbara at the University of Michigan, where I had also studied. We were both professors at the University of Michigan in the late 80s and early 90s. Barb remained there for several years after I moved to Canada, but we continued to work together because her interest was very strong and she continued to come to Brazil every summer during our summer vacations. We had increasingly larger and more successful exhibitions that traveled to very important universities, museums, and other institutions. The Field Museum in Chicago, UCLA in California, the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa, Canada, and several other places. But our biggest project, our final exhibition, was called “Bandits and Heroes, Poets and Saints: Folk Art from Northeastern Brazil,” and it opened at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in 2012. Or rather, in 2013. We worked on it throughout 2012, setting it up, and it stayed there for about eight months, and then traveled to 23 more cities. Well, from there to the De Saussure Museum of African American History in Chicago, which was the first museum in the country dedicated to African American history. And from there to Atlanta, to a museum that served seven historically Black colleges and universities. So, that was its beginning. It was funded by the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities. And it was a three-site, four-year project. But we received a call during that period from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, asking if we would like to work with them for another five years and take the exhibition across the country. They would cover the costs, help organize the tour, and develop additional educational and promotional materials. We seized the opportunity, and it was wonderful.

With the help and additional support of the foundation, the exhibition traveled to 23 other locations in the United States, from the West Coast and Hawaii to Massachusetts, and many other places. It was a very successful tour. I received great reviews and feedback from visitors, and it was an exciting experience.

How did this journey end?

As the tour drew to a close, and indeed did end during the Covid pandemic, the last two venues had to be cancelled because many cultural institutions were closed at the time, so we lost those last two venues. But the museum, the exhibition itself, came back to us. And at that point we were thinking about how to deal with that. We had come to Brazil in 2020 to talk to people. That was during the pandemic, shortly before Covid, and at the beginning of the tour, when Bandidos e Heróis was still on a national tour. So there was nothing we could do.

But we went back to talk to artists and museum directors we knew and other cultural leaders, people we knew who might have information or advice to give us on how to find a place, preferably in Northeast Brazil, where we could leave this collection when the tour ended, so that it would become part of the permanent collection. We wanted to return the collection to its homeland and we wanted it to be a prestigious museum. We wanted to make sure that, wherever the collection was, the artists, the communities, the people of that segment of culture, of popular culture, of folk art, could see it and see it celebrated, and that this could lead to a better understanding among all segments of the population. It is a form of art that, even in Brazil, had been neglected, really overshadowed by colonial and academic art. But bringing a significant collection – and we felt at that moment that it was a significant collection, both in size and pedigree – having traveled under the auspices of the leading cultural institution in the United States, the National Endowment for the Humanities, to 23, or rather 25 locations in total, and having had a very successful tour of the US and Canada. So we thought it would be important for it to arrive in a place where it could be truly celebrated and used, and where it could serve as the next logical step in what we consider our management of the collection.

Here in Brazil, the return of these works has been included in the effort towards decolonization and repatriation. What do you think about that?

We weren't really involved in the international discourse on decolonization and repatriation. Repatriation usually has to do with conflicting claims of ownership. Which part of the following: who owns this collection? Some set of works that was bought or, in some cases, stolen from some group or institution at some point in history. Often, there are claims from the place or group from which it came that they actually have the original property rights. So, repatriation is usually a kind of conflict about who owns something. We didn't have any of those kinds of problems. We bought all of these works, mostly individually, from individual artists, in some cases through a gallery representing an artist, but in most cases, this collection was actually acquired individually from artists. And we saw that our mission wasn't to own or keep it, but rather to use it and focus on it with respect to the collection itself. And we were trying to imagine its most useful future. And what Barbara and I concluded was that this most useful future would be in Brazil, in a renowned museum. And its purpose there would be to increase understanding and appreciation for this unique Brazilian work. This was a unique art form for the artists and for the culture of the people from which the art originated. It's a group, a type of art, and indeed a segment of the Brazilian population that has been neglected in the past as a fundamental part of Brazilian culture. And we thought that this donation, if it were to go to a renowned museum, could carry forward this mission. A mission that we did our best to promote when the work was on display in North America.


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