MoCA of the Month
Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo
MAC USP – São Paulo, Brazil
The Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo is one of the most important museums of modern and contemporary art in Latin America. With approximately 8.000 works, the museum collections cover a period that goes from the modernist Avant-Gardes in the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, both nationally and internationally.
MAC was created in 1963, when the University of São Paulo received the collection of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM, founded in 1948), and the collection of the Italian-Brazilian businessman Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho (chairman of MAM), under the care of the museum.
As a university museum, its main aim is to research and divulge its own collections. Academic research is undertaken by the three professors of Department of Research in Art – Theory and Critique, and two professors working at the Department of Art and Education. The professors in the museum develop their work as researchers and curators by means of a programme of optional disciplines for under-graduate students who come from all under-graduate programmes of the university campus; by the post-graduate programme in Aesthetics and Art History – an interdisciplinary programme that involves four different faculties of the university, including MAC -, and by organizing exhibitions, lectures, conferences and seminars. The museum has had a long history of education of generations of students who take internship assisting the professors’ academic research, as well as supervision of Masters Theses through the Graduate Programme in Aesthetics and Art History.
MAC is also contemplating about including a programme of temporary exhibitions, so as to promote the debate of contemporary art issues, and stimulate the issues raised by its collections.
In its three venues (one at Ibirapuera Park, and the other two in the university campus), many extension activities are offered to the public, such as guided tours, short courses and workshop activities.
The museum receives an average of 60.000 visitors per year, most of them being students from primary and secondary schools and university students. In addition to this, the museum’s academic programme receives about 200 students every year in its under-graduate disciplines and post-graduate course.
MAC-USP
Rua da Reitoria, 160 Cidade Universitária 05508-900 – São Paulo
MAC is to face a new challenge from 2010 on, as the museum is to move into a new building at Ibirapuera Park. The main building inside the university campus will be maintained to support the academic programme, but the exhibition spaces shall be transferred to the so-called Agriculture Pavilion, one of Oscar Niemeyer’s buildings at Ibirapuera Park – a complex conceived to celebrate the 400 Years Anniversary of the city of São Paulo, inaugurated in 1954. From its actual 3.500 m2 of exhibition space (both in the campus and in the Bienal de São Paulo Pavilion at Ibirapuera Park), MAC is to have a total of about 20.000 m2 in its new building.
3.500sqm, 20,000sqm in the new facilities as of 2010
Mission Statement
Collection
As an heir of the former MAM collection gathered along the 1950s, MAC has the most significant collection of modernist Brazilian and international art, reflecting the rich exchange between Brazilian artists and European artists during the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. In this sense, the collection also houses a number of works which participated and/or were prizes of the Bienal de São Paulo. Because the former Museum of Modern Art was in charge of organizing the Bienal de São Paulo (1951-1961), the exhibition had acquisition prizes in painting, sculpture and prints to enlarge and update the museum’s collection. Even after the separation between the former MAM and the Bienal de São Paulo, in 1962, MAC when created in 1963 continued to receive works that took part in the Bienal de São Paulo.
Once the museum started out its activities in the university in 1963, the first director of the museum, Prof. Walter Zanini, conceived a number of actions which helped to grow MAC’s collection, especially promoting exhibitions such as the so-called Jovem Art Contemporânea [Young Contemporary Art] and establishing a net of exchanges among artists all over the world (mainly Latin America and Eastern Europe). Such actions resulted in a significant collection of Conceptual Art of the late 1960s and 1970s. This period also marked the beginning of the photography collection in the museum, both by receiving exhibitions organized by museums abroad (mainly the Museum of Modern Art, in New York) and by questioning the boundaries of the canon designed to the acceptance of the medium in the museum. The museum also had, then, the gallery Lado B [B Side], where artists could show their experimentation with video.
Another important trait of the collection is the massive presence of works on paper, be them drawings, prints, pastels or collages. They represent about 2/3 of the collections, not included the set of artists’ books and artists’ posters and other publication media.
Collection Focus
History
The Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade São Paulo (MAC USP, Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo) was founded in 1963, when the University received from the President of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM, Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo), Mr. Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho, Ciccilo, the holdings that constituted MAM. This initial collection was later enhanced by the donation of the private collection of Mr. Matarazzo and wife, Mrs. Yolanda Penteado. The collection increased with particular donations, like the international works given by the Fundation Nelson Rockfeller, and prize of the Bienais Internacionais de São Paulo.
The historic beginning of MAC/USP marked the first specialized collection of the twentieth-century art in Latin America. This was a result of the effort of artists and researchers who aimed at the creation of a new place to receive São Paulo’s modern art, an effort prepared and led by intellectuals through modern trends and an integrating potential.
Today, MAC/USP has an outstanding collection of around 8,000 pieces of art, including paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, engravings, sculptures and conceptual works, constituting a great cultural heritage with national and international influences. Works of artists such as Anita Malfatti, Di Cavalcante, Brecheret, Tarsila, Rego Monteiro, Portinari, Oiticica, De Chirico, Modigliani, Boccioni, Picasso, among others, are displayed.
