A museum dedicated to a reappraisal of the history, memory, culture and identity of black Brazilians opened here in late 2004. While a public institution, the Museu Afro Brasil owes its existence in large part to a private individual: artist, collector, curator and administrator Emanoel Araújo. The former head of the Pinacoteca do Estado, another public institution that he built into one of Brazil’s most successful exhibition spaces, Araújo served as curator and coordinator of the new museum during the institution’s inaugural period.
“This is a museum that avoids the old stereotypes,” said Araújo, who took over as director of the museum after a brief stint as municipal secretary of culture in early 2005. “We’re thinking about the diaspora, thinking about the black as an actor.” Rather than serving as an anthropological or ethnological museum, the institution intends to work with the creators of contemporary black culture from art to dance to music.
Most of the objects on display come from Araújo’s personal collection of 5,000 artworks and artifacts – over 1,000 of which have been placed on permanent loan to kick-start the museum’s collection. Araújo accumulated most of those objects during the last 15 years as he curated a series of exhibitions about Brazilian black art and culture. Items in the permanent exhibition range from slavery artifacts to rural Carnaval costumes to contemporary sculptures by Mestre Didi.
The institution’s story dates to 1988, the 100th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Brazil, when a commemorative exhibition curated by Araújo called The Afro-Brazilian Hand: Understanding the Artistic and Historical Contribution appeared at Săo Paulo’s Museum of Modern Art (MAM-SP). Araújo also directed the Afro-Brazilian section of the Brazil 500 Years mega-exhibition in Săo Paulo in 2000. A scaled-down version of that show became Brazil Body & Soul at the Guggenheim Museum in 2001-2002.
Meanwhile, in the 1990s, the Săo Paulo city council passed an ordinance to mandate the creation of a museum dedicated to black culture. The financially-strapped municipality failed to implement the ordinance until then-Mayor Marta Suplicy, a leftist who lost a reelection bid in November 2004, forged a public-private partnership. The Floristan Fernandes Institute (IFF), a think tank linked to her and President Lula’s Workers Party (PT), signed on as a partner and took advantage of a federal law that offers tax breaks to companies that invest in cultural projects to raise $1.5 million from state-owned oil company Petrobrás for the initiative. The city donated and spent about $500,000 to renovate the Padre Manoel da Nóbrega Pavilion, an Oscar Niemeyer-designed building smack dab in Ibirapuera Park, Săo Paulo’s Central Park, to house the museum.
The IFF, a non-profit specialized in public administration, is helping to design the museum’s administrative model. “It will be connected to the education policy of the city,” guaranteed Maria Teresa Augusti, IFF president.
The first temporary exhibition opened in November 2004. Called Brasileiro, Brasileiros (Brazilian, Brazilians), it hailed the contributions of all of the main groups that comprise Brazil’s racial melting pot and calls attention to individuals of mixed ancestry. It may indeed set the tone for the museum. “Some people my not accept the idea of racial mixture that Brazil presents,” said Araújo. “The idea of 1,000 colors is different from that in the United States.”
Afro-Brazil Museum
Address: Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral (no number), Manoel da Nóbrega Pavilion, Gate 10, Ibirapuera Park
Telephone: 5579-6099
Wednesday-Monday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
Free
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