Exhibition "Langsdorff: The River Expedition 200 Years Later"

Amid the worsening climate crisis, advancing deforestation, and growing disputes over traditional territories, the project Langsdorff: The River Expedition 200 Years Later It raises an unavoidable question: what has become of the Brazil that was explored and documented two centuries ago? By marking the bicentenary of the departure of the historic river journey from the Tietê to the Amazon, the initiative transforms one of the most important scientific voyages of the 19th century into a starting point for reflecting on the environmental—and civilizational—challenges that define the 21st century.

The project debuts on March 31st with the opening of the exhibition Langsdorff: The River Expedition 200 Years Later, at Guita and José Mindlin Brazilian Library of USP (BBM-USP)Organized by the Hercule Florence Institute and Documenta Pantanal, in partnership with BBM-USP, the Moreira Salles Institute (IMS), and the Maria Antônia Center of USP, the initiative runs until June of this year, also including a film festival and the launch of publications on the subject.

Led by Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff and financed by the Russian Empire of Tsar Alexander I, the expedition that departed from Porto Feliz (SP) on June 22, 1826, was one of the most ambitious scientific incursions ever undertaken into the interior of Brazil in the 19th century. More than mapping rivers, collecting and cataloging species, the mission sought to understand a territory still little known to European centers.

The river crossing between 1826 and 1829, from the Tietê River to the Amazon, passing through the provinces of São Paulo, Mato Grosso, and Grão-Pará, included among its members the botanist Ludwig Riedel, the astronomer Néster Rubtsov, the painter Aimé-Adrien Taunay, the draftsman and inventor Hercule Florence, who would settle in Brazil, becoming the main witness of this journey, and Wilhelmine von Langsdorff, Langsdorff's wife and the only woman to travel with the group.

Hercule's diaries, drawings, and records constitute today one of the most important visual and scientific documentations of 19th-century Brazil, fundamental for constructing the country's image abroad and for the historical understanding of its biodiversity.

The exhibition, the central axis of the project, is held at the BBM-USP and is curated by the Hercule Florence Institute. The exhibition is divided between the Multipurpose Room and the BNDES Room, establishing a direct dialogue between past and present. The works presented come from the collections of the IHF itself, the BBM-USP, the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), and also from the Cyrillo Hercules Florence collection, now under the care of the IMS. Bringing together more than one hundred works, the exhibition juxtaposes images, travelogues, publications, and documents from the 19th century with contemporary productions made in the same regions traversed by the expedition.

The Multipurpose Room contains historical records and reproductions of materials from Hercule Florence and other travelers and naturalists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The BNDES Room blends historical works with photographs by names such as Lalo de Almeida, Paula Sampaio, Miguel Chikaoka, and João Pompeu, who investigate themes such as disordered occupation, siltation, deforestation, wildfires, territorial conflicts, and the resistance of traditional communities in the Amazon and Pantanal regions.

More than just updating past landscapes, the recent images create a critical counterpoint that invites the public to realize that the environmental crisis is not an abstract phenomenon, but a concrete and accelerated transformation of the Brazilian landscape.

“The expedition is not presented as a heroic feat, but almost as a memento mori. In just two centuries, a tiny interval in the history of humanity, we have profoundly altered the ecosystems that those travelers encountered,” points out Antonio Florence, great-great-grandson of Hercule Florence and founder of the institute that celebrates his life, the IHF. “The 19th century built the world we live in today, including the model of exploitation that led to the devastation we see. Revisiting this journey is a way to understand how we got here and to question the future we are building.”

For Francis Melvin Lee, curator at the IHF, the iconography of the expedition is not merely a visual and wondrous memory of the nature present there, but a testament to a time when the consequences of human intervention were still circumscribed. “When we revisit these same territories today, what emerges is a landscape traversed by devastation and conflict. The exhibition highlights these two poles so that we can perceive the historical dimension of the transformation that occurred in this very short interval of time.”

In addition to the exhibition at BBM-USP, the project also includes a film series dedicated to Brazilian environmental cinema. Curated by Mônica Guimarães of Documenta Pantanal, the initiative takes place between May and June. Finally, marking exactly 200 years since the beginning of the river expedition, the project will conclude with the launch of publications on June 22nd and 23rd. The works are based on Hercule Florence's original manuscripts and bring together critical texts, visual essays, and recent research that expand the artist's legacy into the 21st century. More details about these programs will be released soon.

Service
Exhibition | Langsdorff: The River Expedition 200 Years Later
From March 31st to June 26th
Monday to Friday, 8:30 am to 20:30 pm; Saturday, 9 am to 13 pm; Sundays and holidays, closed.
Free entry