Group exhibition "When the museum is a river"

O Ministry of Culture, Nubank and Tomie Ohtake Institute present the exhibition When the museum is a river, a group exhibition held in partnership with Emílio Goeldi Paraense Museum. Curated by Ana Roman, Sabrina Fontenele e Vania Leal, and scientific curation of Nelson Sanjad, Samia Batista e Sue CostaThe exhibition stems from reflections developed in the project "A River Does Not Exist Alone," carried out in 2025 at the Zoobotanical Park of the Goeldi Museum in Belém, and proposes an investigation into the contemporary role of institutions dedicated to memory, science, and the production of knowledge about the Amazon. "When the Museum is a River" runs parallel to the exhibitions "Viva Viva Escola Viva," about the indigenous movement of the Living Schools, and "Estrelas Escontes," a solo exhibition by the artist Luiz Zerbini.

The exhibition brings together guest artists and scientific, archaeological, ethnographic, and biological collections from the Goeldi Museum in a proposal that articulates contemporary art, science, and ancestral knowledge. Participating artists include Déba Tacana, Elaine Arruda, Estúdio Flume, Francelino Mesquita, Gustavo Caboco, Mari Nagem, Noara Quintana, Paula Giordano, PV Dias, Rafael Segatto Barboza da Silva, and Sallisa Rosa.

Just as in "A River Doesn't Exist Alone," curated by Sabrina Fontenele and Vânia Leal, for the exhibition's curators, who join Ana Roman, the image of the river also runs through this new show as a metaphor for thinking about displacements, encounters, and transformations. "By connecting distinct territories, crossing borders, and continuously reorganizing the landscape, the river produces zones of encounter, displacement, and transformation," they state. From this perspective, the exhibition proposes rethinking the museum "not as a stable institution, but as a continuous field of relationships between territory, science, spirituality, and daily life," in which collections cease to operate as fixed records of the past and begin to be understood as "living matter from which it is possible to imagine and build other futures."

Among the collections presented are materials related to the Emília Snethlage Didactic Collection, used in the museum's educational activities; archaeological research on Amazonian rock paintings; the "Replicating the Past" project, developed with ceramists from Pará and Amapá; studies on the discovery of giant sloth fossils in the Amazon; as well as scientific and environmental projects such as Esecaflor, dedicated to investigating the effects of climate change on the Amazon Rainforest. The exhibition also highlights the historical work of the Goeldi Museum with Amazonian indigenous peoples and contemporary discussions surrounding the classification and reorganization of ethnographic and biological collections.

For Nelson Sanjad, Sue Costa, and Sâmia Batista, the scientific curators of the exhibition, the show deals with “connections between people; between fields of knowledge; between humans and non-humans; between different territories; between past, present, and future. A museum allows, promotes, and nurtures these connections, just like the roots of a vast mangrove swamp, which breathe, support, nourish, protect, and shelter the life that flows around it, the ancestral mud that makes us one and everything. Only the museum is capable of transforming the particular into the collective, expanding the individual into the social whole, giving meaning and a horizon that can unite us.”

Alongside the opening of the exhibition, the Tomie Ohtake Institute will hold the seminar "When the Museum Is: Collections and Futures" on June 25th and 26th, organized in partnership with the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo. The event brings together researchers, artists, curators, managers, and museum professionals to discuss how collections participate in the construction of contemporary museum institutions. The program articulates debates on heritage, ethnographic, archaeological, and scientific collections, curatorial practices, the circulation of collections, and artistic creation processes, connecting experiences developed in the Amazonian context and in other cultural and university institutions in the country. The opening of the exhibition is part of the seminar program, which proposes reflections on the relationships between museums, territories, research, communities, and knowledge production. More information at the Tomie Ohtake Institute.

When the museum is a river, it is a project of the Ministry of Culture, through Federal Law of

Cultural Incentive (Rouanet Law), and the Tomie Ohtake Institute, in partnership with the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. The exhibition is sponsored by Nubank, institutional supporter of the Tomie Ohtake Institute; AkzoNobel, in the Gold category; Aché Laboratórios Farmacêuticos, in the Silver category; and with support from Coral.

Service
Exhibition | When the museum is a river
From June 20th to August 16th
Tuesday to Sunday, from 11 am to 19 pm (last entry at 18 pm)