Museu de Arte Negra: passado, presente, ancestral

Abstract

The research investigates the trajectory of the Museu de Arte Negra (MAN) from the 1950s to its contemporary manifestations. Created by the Teatro Experimental do Negro under the leadership of Abdias Nascimento, the Museu de Arte Negra was a revolutionary project aimed at combating racism in its aesthetic and institutional dimensions. Two actions are fundamentally symbolic in its construction: the Art Contest on the theme of the Black Christ (1955) and the 1st Exhibition of the Museu de Arte Negra at the Museu da Imagem e do Som in Rio de Janeiro (1968). In both cases, the discussions provoked by these initiatives made headlines and filled newspapers and magazines with events explored throughout this research. After AI-5 was enacted by the dictatorship at the end of 1968, Abdias Nascimento, the museum’s organizer, went into exile in the United States, and the MAN entered a sort of limbo that lasted fifty years, from 1970 to 2020. However, the MAN experienced a kind of rebirth through a series of actions surrounding the Abdias Nascimento Program and the Museu de Arte Negra at Instituto Inhotim. Between 2021 and 2024, these actions resulted in fourteen artistic initiatives (exhibitions, commissioned works, among others) that received extensive coverage from national and international media, sparking significant discussions and debates for the construction of non-hegemonic narratives in art history