Guest Author of March 2009

This month it is a great pleasure for us to present as our fifth guest author Emanoel Araújo, founder of the Museu AfroBrasil, who was interviewed by Hans Belting on the occasion of the first GAM Platform in São Paulo in 2008. In this interview Araújo not only discusses the role of contemporary art in today’s Brazil, but also provides us a deep insight into the creation of this unique institution throughout the world.

The Museu AfroBrasil in São Paulo. A New Museum Concept

The Museu AfroBrasil was created by municipal decree on November 20, 2003—Black Awareness Day—in a ceremony attended by state representatives and the Afro-Brazilian community of São Paulo. On this occasion, the Governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alkmin, donated the Manoel da Nóbrega Pavilion, designed by the Architect Oscar Niemeyer, and located in the beautiful Ibirapuere Park, the city’s central park, to house the Museu AfroBrasil.

The Pavilhão Padre Manoel da Nóbrega, designed by Oscar Niemeyer and built in 1954. Photo: courtesy Museu AfroBrasil

The museum opened on October 23, 2004 with Museu AfroBrasil: um Conceito em Perspectiva [Afro-Brazil Museum: a Concept in Perspective]. On November 20 of the same year, the exhibition Brasileiro, Brasileiros [Brazilian, Brazilians] was dedicated to the presence of the three races in Brazil. “Some people may not accept the idea of racial mixture that Brazil represents,” said Araújo, current director of the museum. The Museu AfroBrasil, as the visitor’s guide explains, “aims to tell an alternative Brazilian history. This means it has the complex task of deconstructing an image of the black population constructed from a historically inferior perspective, and of transforming it into a prestigious image founded on equality and belonging, so re-confirming a sense of respect for one of the founding populations of Brazil. [...] In the 20th century the artistic division created by [... ] academic art widened. On [the other hand] there were distinguished Black artists who, because they were outside the canon of [...] art, were considered merely talented craftsmen or, at most, ‘popular artists’– [...] By putting these artists side-by-side the Museum would like to highlight the historical and ultimately arbitrary nature of this separation, and emphasize the intrinsic value of the works by Black artists for which these distinctions lose all meaning.”

Interview with Hans Belting

Hans Belting (H.B.): What is the role of contemporary art in Brazil today?

Emanoel Araújo (E.A.): I think it was important to create the Bienal de São Paulo to pull Brazil out of her cultural isolation faced by the hegemony of other countries. It was also important for Brazilian art to invite the Swiss artist Max Bill, and his Unidade Tri–Partida [Tripartite Unity] to the biennial in 1951, as his presence consolidated the Concretism movement. Currently, globalization meets with a certain commitment of the galleries and art fairs throughout the world; however, contemporary art in Brazil is marked by a discourse that is not necessarily comprehensible abroad, where the regime of international curators pursues other interests. Usually, artists in Brazil looked beyond borders and identified with the ‘established’, or the ‘civilized’, without paying tribute to their roots and to the fact that they mixed with others to become Brazilian. This type of anthropophagia led to a certain mystique without which all artistic expression on this side of the Atlantic would look like second class art.

H.B.: Is global art a new experience compared to modernism?

E.A.: To a certain extent, yes; the hegemony of the world continues to be the same, with the same dogmas, without even looking to other social and economic realities. And I think that this globalization is still a unilateral process, as the Europeans are ever more European, not just as a geographic unit, but also as a closed concept with ethical, aesthetic, and economic principles. In the face of this continuing colonialism we are even more distressed by exclusion and unable to understand who we are in this so-called village, or global ‘amalgamation.’ We still do not know if we are participants, or whether we are mere spectators or consumers.

H.B.: How do you see the role of your new museum among the other art museums?

E.A.: I think that the new museum should, to a certain extent, offer a view of what was imposed on us while we are still looking beyond. Such a formative role is highly important for the museum in order to educate the public. The Museu AfroBrasil has a commitment to history, to memory and, most importantly, to the self-esteem of many Afro-Brazilians who do not know who they are. Despite having a commitment to view our multicultural roots, I cannot define it as a museum of anthropology; the intention is that it should seek other than merely ethnic or folk issues. I feel that African art, for example, is displayed not as an ethnological or anthropological exhibit, but rather as an art with its own reductionist, totem-like myths and with aesthetic aspects inherent in its creation. In other words, this museum will not represent a work of art as an isolated phenomenon or as the work of a movement or artist, but rather as a unit symbolizing the memory and history of a people.

Art museums, with a few exceptions, continue to submit themselves to the pride and the economic power of the first world countries, including their conquests and artistic or architectural treasures, as is the case with the Guggenheim in Bilbao. They also continue the idea of the colonial definition of what is exotic, such as the art of Africa, the islands of the South Pacific or South America, referred to now as Early Art, as is the case with the new Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

As a Member of the Chilean Parliament, Isabel Allende once invited me to prepare a new concept for the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende in Chile. My project was based mainly on its collection, a collection formed by art critics such as the Brazilian Mario Pedroso, its first director. At that time art criticism played a fundamental role in the analysis of artistic creation and in the formation of modernism. However, the creation of the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador allende attracted donations of artists from the four corners of the world, a kind of moral support to the new policy of President Salvador Allende for Chile.2 Another museum of this kind is the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, for it means a lot for the ethical and moral history of humanity. With this approach in mind, the Museu AfroBrasil would have the same meaning, if our new Brazilian history were not so ambiguous.

H.B.: How would you describe the relationship between the museum that you have founded and the community museums of the United States?

E.A.: I do not care for the community museums of the United States, and I am not even sure whether they exist. However, I should add that we are worlds apart from their racial problems. Our ethnic composition is rooted in Portuguese colonialism, and we are Catholic. The Portuguese, a people born out of many races, where ethnic mixing comes with enforced rule, are very different from the Calvinist protestant formation of the United States. Our colors, and there are many, were perversely created to allow for a system of racial democracy, where the white established a pact in the definition of race according to color. Brazil was not only a slave- driven society, but also the last country in the Americas to free its slaves on whose labor wealth was based. This labor was used to grow sugarcane, tobacco, coffee and to mine for gold and precious stones, and today Brazil has still not come to terms with the question of this slave-driven society. In the nineteenth century, when slavery was flourishing, some blacks were more important than they are today. There were Negro poets, journalists, jurists, physicians, editors, writers and engineers. Negroes were forgotten after slavery was abolished in 1888, with the military coup of the republic carried out by the land-owning elites, the oligarchies of Brazil. The exodus to the periphery of major towns and cities, and the lack of any formal education for the people made, and continues to make a very big difference between Brazil and the United States.

H.B.: What is the significance of the Museu Afro Brasil for São Paulo?

E.A.: The museum for Saõ Paulo is not just a personal issue, as this city was built by Brazilians from all over Brazil, as well as by foreign immigrants. The population of this city, hidden away on the periphery, is 60 percent black. The city was the last stronghold of slavery in the country during the coffee years, that is, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It was here that the republican movement arose, affected by the abolition of slavery. Here, we are all foreigners, but it is the most cosmopolitan city of Brazil, and it is from here that culture and progress radiate out to all parts of the country. This is my third great experience in the field of museology; I left a new idea of a museum behind, when I directed the Pinacoteca do Estado of São Paulo, not only in the radical architectural reforms made to the old building, but in the museography of the exhibitions and the collection etc. Now, I face the challenge of the Museu AfroBrasil which certainly touches a raw nerve for many with pre-conceived ideas in, and about Brazilian society. There is little to be found about the museum in the media. It is not even mentioned in the tabloids but, despite this silence, more than 600,000 Brazilians, paulistas, and foreigners have visited us in the four years since we have been opened.

H.B.: After what you have just said, how did you manage to create the museum, which seems to have been a miracle?

E.A.: Miracles do happen, first in the formation of the collection of documents, sculptures and paintings, photographs, and other items of Afro-Brazilian culture. I had curated several exhibitions in this line in São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and even at the Frankfurt Kunstverein over the past 30 years. When the collection grew considerably, the then mayor, Marta Suplicy, invited me, through her Secretariat for Culture, to create the museum. It appears to be a miracle, but it is not quite like that, because this has taken a lot of work and a great deal of daily grind to consolidate the idea, but also to consolidate the ideal. A great deal of patience was required, which is one of the qualities of stubborn people like me.

H.B.: As a museum can it serve the memory of the country?

E.A.: When I see school groups in the museum, I think that such visits must have some effect on the memory of these children, who are the future of the country because the museum was built to seduce whoever visits it. Children are far more vulnerable and sensitive than adults. They are still in their formative years when images have an immediate power. For this very reason, an accumulation of objects reinforces the remembrance of our heritage and of our Brazilian aesthetics. A museum of this type should be like a mirror that can reflect examples from the past and present so that we can recognize ourselves in each character, in each painting, sculpture, photograph or object. Our history has to be present, not only in the collection, but in the temporary exhibitions. Because of this, the role of guides who accompany visits completes the educational activity of the museum.

Installation View at Museu AfroBrasil: Technology and Design in the Age of Slavery. Photo: courtesy Museu AfroBrasil

H.B.: When did you start forming your collection and what form does the permanent collection take?

E.A.: From early on I have been a fairly passionate collector. My father was a goldsmith. Although he never wanted to teach his trade to his children, he was in the habit of collecting models for producing jewels. But perhaps the habit of collecting has other reasons such as making up for something missing emotionally or resulting from the idea of solitude, the fear of emptiness, and the urge to hold on to things. This particular collection, the nucleus of the museum, was inspired by a great friend, the ethnographer Waldeloir Rego; it was he who, to a certain extent, persuaded my eye and my soul to recognize our culture, our Brazilian-ness. Certainly this collection has a wider range of pursuits. In order to protect our memory, things may be of interest for the permanent collection.