O Museu de Arte do Rio no processo de construção de um imaginário da cidade.

Abstract

The present work sought to understand the fomentation and diffusion of imaginaries around the city of Rio de Janeiro, which has the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) and its exhibition as beginning point. These art exhibitions occurred in accordance with the museum’s vocation to show the city’s transversal history and present a very diversified range in relation to the appropriate subjects, evidencing how multiples are the imaginary ones. However, at first moment, it was necessary to go back in the timeline of history in order to make sense of the scenario that, perhaps, best contributed to a changed conception of questions that dictate a city. The ideal cities for preaching symmetry, harmony and organizations, ended up influencing the emergence of imagined cities and, consequently, the production of works that sought to expose the desires of the time. For this dissertation, the contribution of the ideal and/or imagined cities act as mirrors for the characteristics chosen for analysis. The imaginary, for the most part, is delineated by the individual and/or collective memory, but when placed within a delimited space such as a museum, the presence of a mediator between the chosen theme, the works and the public is necessary. This role is assigned by the curator, who can, through their choices, change the way a story has been told. However, the definition of what is a curator is new and still revolves around many discussions. To obtain a more comprehensive universe about this subject, the dissertation was supported by three names of curators who at some point had their work linked to history of MAR: Evandro Salles, Marcelo Campos and Rafael Cardoso. The objects of the study turned around six discoveries that followed the conceptual design that has eleven crucial points to raise the central question of the word: how does MAR contribute to the idealizations of the city of Rio de Janeiro? Therefore, it is extremely important to understand what the MAR is, its locations in the city’s cultural panorama and the wat in which the collection was created with Significant Centers. The theoretical foundations came from bibliographical sources that involve historians and arte professionals, such as Giulio Carlo Argan and Hal Foster. In addition to the analysis of the speech promoted by the Museu de Arte do Rio, visits to its exhibitions, periodicals covering topics involved in research and interviews.