MAC USP: Collections in dialogue
Carlos Roberto F. Brandão
MAC USP Director
Since its creation in 1963, o MAC USP has been aiming at preserving, researching, and enlarging the collection it had received from MAM SP, as well as fostering contemporary artistic production. With this double intention, the Museum was a pioneer in collecting photography, video-art, and procedural artistic propositions that were emerging in the country in the 1960s and 1970s. In this manner, it built the most important collection towards a concept of international contemporary art in Brazil. Its part in the emergence of new artistic trends has been known since then. MAC USP was recently the first museum in the country to collect media-art and digital art-as is the case with Gilbertto Prado's installation, displayed here.
Actions of preservation and documentation of contemporary art were many at MAC USP, implemented particularly during the tenure of the Museum's first director, Professor Walter Zanini (1924-2013). For him, close collaboration with artists was key to update the idea of museum, of research, and of art itself. That idea of museum was revisited when MAC USP was installed in its new location, where the allocation of the exhibitions schedule reflects its aimed prospective and its differential in academic research around its collections, on exhibitions comprising pieces from the collection with extended periods in the fourth and fifth floors of the building.
The collaboration with Paço das Artes is, therefore, of utmost relevance for MAC USP's schedule. Just like the Museum, Paço das Artes fosters the latest contemporary productions with great attention to preserving the memory of these productions, particularly focusing on debates about contemporary art documentation, archiving, and conservation. These two institutions have been creating space for ideas and knowledge exchange regarding these issues through seminars and study groups. It was almost natural that MAC USP would host Paço das Artes for an exhibition in which curators from both institutions proposed a certain reading of MAC USP's collection, intersecting artists who took part in shows and events at Paço and which have works as part of MAC USP's collection.
The Paradoxo(s) da arte contemporânea: diálogos entre o acervo do MAC USP e do Paço das Artes [Contemporary Art Paradox(es): Dialogues between MAC USP's and Paço das Artes' Collections] exhibition was a suitable opportunity to revisit a fundamental artist for both institutions, for artistic research in the country, and for fostering and dialoguing with more current productions: Regina Silveira. Taken as the axis of the exhibition, from her work Paradoxo do santo (A Saint's Paradox), curators Priscila Arantes (Paço das Artes) and Ana Magalhães (MAC USP) selected a set of works by various artists contemporary to Regina Silveira who, in a way, cover the issues that emanate from her work. Another important aspect in the exhibition's production process was exactly the updating of presentation materials in Silveira's and other artists' works present here, in order to conserve them.
Paço das Artes: Collections in dialogue
Priscila Arantes
Paço das Artes' Artistic Director and Curator
Preservation of memory of its activities, as well as of contemporary art, has been one of the pressing concerns of Paço das Artes. Not by chance, since 2010, when the institution celebrated its 40th anniversary, Paço started encompassing work aiming at protecting its history through a set of curatorial actions and projects.
Because it is not a museum in the strict sense of the word and, therefore, it does not possess a collection of artworks, Paço das Artes made its record and archive work the fundamental axis of its "collection." We could say that its actions constitute a kind of Imaginary Museum, as defined by André Malraux: Paço das Artes's collection are the artists, the activities, the curators, critics, educators, and visitors who came to the institution.
In 2010, Paço das Artes launched the Livro_Acervo (Book_Collection) project. It was a portable exhibition and the compilation of the institution's archive, from one of the most relevant programs of artistic experimentation in Brazil: Temporada de Projetos (Season of Projects). Created in 1997, the season became, throughout the years, a wealth of young contemporary art, bringing together artists, young curators, and emerging critics.
Arquivo Vivo (Living Archive), an exhibition presented in 2013, continued that curatorial research by enlarging the discussion about the archive and the collection to contemporary artistic practices. Comprising twenty two different local and international artists, the project aimed to be a space of reflection around the archive and the strategies to build memory in the context of contemporary culture.
Recently, the digital platform MAPA: Memória Paço das Artes (Paço das Artes Memory, 2014) was launched gathering all the artists, critics, curators, and jury panelists who were part of Temporada de Projetos from its creation in the 1990s. The platform was conceived to be not only a device of research, but also a device of memory and of the history of an important portion of Brazilian young contemporary art, often forgotten by hegemonic narratives.
Since March 2016, when Paço das Artes left its old quarters at Cidade Universitária after more than twenty years, the institution is lodged at MIS (Museu da Imagem e Som. Museum of Image and Sound), having an exhibition room that has been utilized to continue the shows of Temporada de Projetos.
Within this context of looking for its own quarters, the institution has been investing in projects and exhibitions through collaborations with different institutions. It was under this perspective that we designed the Paradoxo(s) da arte contemporânea: diálogos entre os acervos do MAC USP e do Paço das Artes (Contemporary Art Paradox(es): Dialogues between MAC USP's and Paço das Artes's Collections) exhibition, proposing dialogue between MAC USP's and Paço das Artes's collections-in the case of Paço, highlighting artists who had exhibitions at the institution during the past few years. That approximation is justified on many different fronts, but particularly due to the relevance both MAC USP and Paço das Artes had and have in fostering and spreading Brazilian contemporary art.
We believe that this dialogue can be a fertile tool not to cast light on the work of these two institutions but also, and particularly, to sow together some loose threads, as Hélio Oiticica would say, of Brazilian contemporary art present in these two institutional collections.
© 2018 Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo