When Ana Gonçalves Magalhães and Marta Bogéa took over the management of Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP), in July 2020, the world was experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis with the Covid-19 pandemic. The vaccine was still far from becoming a reality, and it was impossible to predict when we would come out of social isolation again.
For the museum, the solution found at that time was virtual activities, through which MAC USP remained active and, more than that, stood out. For example, a creative intervention by artist Gustavo Von Há on the institution's Instagram drew attention, which even raised doubts as to whether the profile had been hacked, in addition to webinars and debate cycles held in partnership with museums such as the Pinacoteca de São Paulo and the Instituto Moreira Salles. These, in fact, were already in line with the management's proposal to bring MAC USP closer to other cultural institutions in the city.
With the return of in-person activities and the relative normalization of life, the directors were able to more effectively develop the guidelines of their initial plan: to create a “laboratory museum,” fostering educational and academic production – “we are a university museum, many people forget that” – and to activate the vast collection of more than 10 modern and contemporary works based on various narratives, with a closer look at racial and migration issues, for example. With this work, MAC USP won, in 2023, the ABCA award dedicated to Collection/Archive/Conservation/Historical Documentation.
The former director, who is a full professor at MAC USP and remains on the institution's board, has just passed the baton to José Lira (director) and Esther Hamburguer (vice-director), who took over the museum in July, located in Ibirapuera, in a building by Oscar Niemeyer, and which has 73 employees in total. arte!brasileiros publishes in October an interview with the new directors to talk about their plans for a management that, as they highlight, does not intend to break with the work that was being done.
Regarding the highlights of the period in which he headed MAC USP, Magalhães points out the expansion of teaching and extension activities; the strengthening of collective work, not only in partnerships between institutions, but also in the museum's internal processes (such as the long-term exhibition Fractured Times, which had six curators); the multidisciplinary focus on activities; the dialogue with contemporary artists and new donations to the collection. It also highlights that the museum managed not only to return to the pre-pandemic number of visitors, of 370 thousand in 2019, but to surpass it, with approximately 410 thousand visitors in 2023.
Read the full interview below, in which Magalhães takes stock of his management:
arte!brasileiros – We can start in 2020, when you and Marta take over as directors, while the pandemic. Of the four years you were in charge of MAC USP, approximately half of it was spent in a period of social isolation. Can you tell us a little about this initial challenge and what work strategies you adopted?
In fact, at that time we thought we would spend six months at home and that everything would be resolved. But that wasn’t the case. So it was very difficult to deal with that situation. But I also think that in a certain sense the museum won, in the sense of thinking of other strategies for communicating with the public. We created a schedule and a set of actions to test strategies such as, for example, a series of online conversations about the exhibitions that should have been on display – and were later on –, bringing together the curators and artists involved and already giving the public something in advance, showing that the museum was still working. We also held a first webinar on curatorial processes that we called Sao Paulo Network, in which we spoke with colleagues from various institutions inside and outside USP over almost two months of programming.
And then I would like to draw attention to two actions that were well-known for the museum during this period. One was inviting the artist Gustavo von Ha to make an intervention on MAC USP's Instagram, which was already part of the processes of his proposal for the exhibition. Common place, which was later exhibited. This resulted in the donation of the first NFT work to the museum, which brings up a very important discussion precisely about the paralysis of this bitcoin, the inclusion of this cryptocurrency within a museum's collection. And Gustavo is, from our point of view, an artist who knew how to deal very well with the issues of social media. He took the experiments he had with his Instagram profile to the MAC USP profile, which was a gain for the museum. Overnight, we exploded and reached people who would never have started following us otherwise. It was a surprise for the public, but it was something very much in line with the institution and the museum's communication.
And I think the other thing that gave MAC USP a certain projection was the fact that we joined forces with the Pinacoteca and the IMS and organized, throughout 2021, a series of virtual meetings about 1922 and the week of modern art, which resulted in 1922: Modernisms in Debate, which is now available on the YouTube platform of the three institutions. It is a valuable material, which was widely accessed, and which was important for us because it allowed us to reevaluate 1922. And thus, it brought together an important set of conversations and themes that had very interesting intersections. In the end, the series was awarded by Select magazine in 2022, which was really cool.
Little by little, life has returned to normal, so to speak, with the return of exhibitions, in-person activities, and classes at USP. So, thinking about a more general assessment of the management, what were the main areas of action and the main advances that you consider were achieved?
I think the very first thing is to recognize ourselves as a university museum, in fact. We are an important interface between USP and outside the university walls, but from the beginning we were very aware that the academic function of the museum is what guides, let's say, all the museum's activities and its entire curatorial program. The museum has to produce a document as a teaching, research and extension unit of the University of São Paulo, which we call an academic project. In fact, it is now being reformulated; we have just submitted the new academic project with a series of guidelines for the next four years, which we understand to be an extension of what we have done so far. And I think the main information, the main aspect that was very important to us, was to mark this place of MAC USP, which is an exceptional place in the city of São Paulo, to understand that we are a teaching museum, a laboratory museum, a space for training at all levels. Thinking not only about mediating general audiences, audiences that are not necessarily specialized, but also about training professionals and researchers who work at the museum, precisely by mediating with the audiences of MAC USP. I mean, we are a museum of the University of São Paulo. Many people forget that…
Maybe because it's not located in a university town?
Yes, but the Ipiranga Museum is also not, for example. I think it has to do with the fact that it is an art museum. And it was created by transferring a collection that came from outside the university to the university. Well, based on this idea that we are this teaching museum, a laboratory, MAC USP has greatly increased the participation of undergraduate students in various activities. We already had a reasonable number of scholarship holders working in education and research projects, but this has increased considerably in recent years. Last year, we had 56 scholarship interns working in various sectors that were the museum's core activities. Linked to curation, exhibition production, communication, education, research, with the museum's collection, the conservation laboratory, the cataloging section. And we try to give more visibility to this.
Another important aspect, which also adds to the impetus and attitude we had in relation to the humanitarian crisis we were experiencing – in fact, we are still experiencing it – was precisely the work in collaboration with other institutions. This is what we did with the cycle 1922: Modernisms in Debate, as I said; in relation to our participation in Regina Silveira's exhibition at the 34th São Paulo Biennial; and with initiatives we had with MAM-SP, which we had already collaborated with in 2018, when MAM celebrated its 70th anniversary. We had an extension of this in the exhibition Wood zone, which took place in both spaces and, now, it is no coincidence that we will be hosting the 38th Panorama of Brazilian Art (starting on 5/10). All of this comes from this reasoning, from this collaborative work, and it also helps us to reevaluate our relationship with these sister institutions, which are truly a family of institutions.
So it is essential to make it clear that the curatorial program, especially the museum's curatorial work, is a collective effort. I think this was another very important hallmark of the management. And not only because of these partnership initiatives with other institutions, but also considering, for example, that the museum's new long-term exhibition – which is where we review the presentation of our collections to the general public every five years – was carried out in an even more collective process than before. This time, six curators worked with a curatorial advisory committee and with their specialties to help us reevaluate the collection. And this way of working ends, for example, with the museum's teams, especially those from production, conservation, documentation, education and communication, working under the coordination of Marta on the exhibition. Open Collection, which opened shortly after the end of our management, but which was entirely designed throughout the last period of our management.
Finally, I think another project that gained a lot of visibility was the one we curated for the Clareira space, which we managed to organize in the second semesters, between 2021 and 2023, and which involved occupying that higher, double-height space on the ground floor of the museum. First, with a visual arts installation, with the exhibition of Angelo Venosa's work, which was his last solo show before he passed away. And with a series of actions that took place every week throughout the semester and that invited writers, playwrights, filmmakers, dancers, performers and actors to present something in that context. This was very interesting because the museum already had a great desire to have space for other forms of artistic expression and this had only happened very timidly, with a music program for the museum. And this in that place in Clareira – which is entirely due to Marta’s architectural reasoning –, in this porous space, on the ground floor, at the entrance, in the museum’s reception area, where all these forms of artistic expression could meet. In short, it was a challenge for us, because this was new to the museum, but it was very successful, in the sense of bringing these other voices to MAC USP and also helping us to reevaluate the museum’s curatorial program, to review the collection and also to understand the museum’s relationship with the city’s ground, its relationship with the park.
Last year, MAC USP received the Emanuel Araújo Award from the Brazilian Association of Art Critics (ABCA), which recognizes the museum’s collection, conservation, and historical documentation. The award highlights the size and importance of the museum’s collection and the work that is done with it. With that in mind, I would like you to talk a little about this ongoing work of safeguarding and activating one of the most important collections of modern and contemporary art in Brazil. What was this work like under your management?
On behalf of MAC USP, we were truly touched by the award. Because of course the collection is already known as a great Brazilian collection, but the award recognizes, more than that, the work done by the museum's teams with this collection. Because collections do not speak alone. They need people, research projects, collaborations, researchers, and thinking heads to activate them. So I think there is recognition of the museum's academic production in the dissemination of its collection.
And this is achieved through tools such as, for example, the two major international partnerships we have established. One with the Getty Foundation (USA), in a project called Connecting Art Histories, which in 2021 resulted in a research webinar with graduate students, which resulted in a first review of the MAC USP collection. In the context of that seminar, we invited three curators – Igor Simões, Diane Lima and Claudinei Roberto – to visit the museum's collection and reevaluate it, so to speak. They started to draw up lists of possible readings, for example, within the context of Afro-diasporic issues, of raciality, which until then we did not really have a specialty to look at. And, in addition to that, Igor and Claudinei's collaboration with the museum was long-lasting.
And the other important international project, which is actually two combined projects, was with the Terra Foundation for American Art, with whom we had already had a partnership to hold an exhibition in 2019. This time it was a partnership to support a postgraduate course in Aesthetics and Art History, in which issues of the African diaspora, indigenous art and migrations are addressed in a comparative study between Brazil and the United States – but which extends to the world, since we are talking about the Americas in relation to the Atlantic, Africa and Europe. And we brought colleagues from all over the world to give classes – in the last semester alone we had 11 international guests. And there is another project with Terra, which is the Collection-in-Residence, which is the Terra collection in residence at MAC USP. And the selection arises precisely from the exchanges with these researchers, within the Terra collection, which will be on display at the museum for two years, being mobilized through extension courses, undergraduate and graduate courses. And that, at the same time, leads us to think about having other collections residing in the museum.
Still thinking about the collection, there is a new exhibition opening now, Graphic Experiments, which is done through the donation of a new collection to the museum. Does this happen regularly? How has this aspect of donations, acquisitions, that is, the incorporation of new works into the MAC USP collection worked?
Historically, MAC USP is a museum that was built on large donations, with artists being the main actors in this story. Because I think MAC USP has this reputation of being a museum of artists and a museum of the memory of artists. The exhibition Graphic Experiments The project was born from the donation of a set of 82 objects, which are publications, books, illustrated magazines, which were selected based on the work of one of my postdoctoral students, Renata Rocco, who is one of the curators of the exhibition, who made this selection from the Ivani and Jorge Yunes collection. And the collection donated these works to the museum last year. This is the result of work that was not started yesterday, because Renata was part of a research group in which, since 2018, with the presence of another postdoctoral student, Patrícia Freitas, we dedicated ourselves to understanding art in this expanded field of applied arts.
In this key we organized three exhibitions. The first was Projects for a modern daily life in Brazil, 1920-1960, which was just the MAC USP collection with some occasional loans to brighten it up. And from this exhibition came our renewed conversation and negotiation with the Leirner couple for the donation of the art deco collection, which took place in 2020 and resulted in an important exhibition in 2022/2023. And this was something unprecedented for the museum, that is, receiving the furniture from Warchavchik's Casa Modernista, having the few textile pieces by Regina Gomide Graz that are in the public collection in Brazil... I think we are the only ones who have fundamental pieces. For example, Woman with Galgo, which is, as my colleague Ana Paula Simioni says, one of the great works of Brazilian modernism of the 20s. So, this is super important. And Graphic Experiments also comes in this key.
So I would say that one of the museum's concerns was to first try to understand other perspectives on collecting. So, the whole debate around the African diasporas, which began with the Getty project in 2021, also resulted in important donations from black Brazilian artists to the collection, such as Sidney Amaral and Sérgio Adriano. There was also the donation in 2023 of a work by Denilson Baniwa. And we also understand that the arrival of Fernanda Pitta as a professor at the museum in 2022 will bring other possibilities for donations in this context.
It's interesting to talk about these more contemporary artists because sometimes when we think of museum collections we imagine something of old works. So I'd like to ask you how this dialogue has been, whether in exhibitions, public notices or acquisitions, with younger artists, or those who have emerged more recently on the art scene. Has this also been a concern over the years?
I think so. This was explicit in the Clareira program; it was also very clear in the exhibition processes. Common place; and this is now in the program of temporary exhibitions that the museum receives, which are external proposals that MAC USP selects to exhibit. And it is also very evident in a call for young artists that we have had since 2020, and which is now in its third edition. With it, we selected exhibitions, three proposals from artists who have not had the opportunity to have, in recent years, any solo exhibition in a museum in São Paulo.
Finally, I would like to know how the management transition went, now with José Lira and Esther Hamburger. It is a project of continuity, not of rupture. Can you talk a little about this transition and what you think are the main challenges that remain for them at this moment?
When they presented the program, they did so as a letter of intent respecting the museum's academic project. This is very important for us because, as a teaching, research and extension unit of USP, we are an institute like any other university unit. So we have to have a life, in short, in continuity. We receive students, we have postgraduate programs and so on. And I think that the arrival of José Lira and Esther Hamburger only adds to the issues that the museum has been addressing. In the letter of intent, which they presented in their application, they talk about a college of arts. I imagine that Professor José Lira will discuss this in more detail with you.
And in our view, this resonates with the museum's intention to be a space for interdisciplinary debate on various issues. So, for example, one of the things they will certainly support us a lot is a major project that we have in place now, a major project that we won from FAPESP last year, which is to set up a heritage science laboratory. To do this, we are working with Márcia Rizzutto, a colleague in nuclear physics who has been working with us for over 15 years on research projects, as a professor working with the museum to set up this laboratory. This puts us in a network with seven other USP units (such as Poli FAU, FFLCH and the Paulista and Archaeology and Ethnology museums) to discuss conservation issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. Setting up this laboratory that, once structured, will be able to provide services to other museums in São Paulo, and this is a unique structure; there is no other laboratory like it in Brazil.
And the idea of the College of Arts, which will come under the management of Lira and Esther, is precisely to bring together different departments of USP and even projects from outside it, that is, it is directly linked to this focus on interdisciplinary work…
Yes, the College of Arts can also do something that was very important to us, which was to give visibility to these connections, these relationships that the museum has with the field of research in various areas of knowledge. This includes, for example, seminars and projects that we have had and continue to have with professionals from various areas, including botanists, physicists and mathematicians.
