Urban Structure 2, 1975
Regina Silveira, included in the 70th year anniversary exhibition of The São Paulo Museum of Modern Art curated by Ana Magalhães, Felipe Chaimovich, and Helouise Costa, São Paulo, Brazil.
Press Release
The Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo celebrates its seventy years with an exhibition that highlights the institution's fundamental values. From the outset, MAM has sought to form a collection through prospective exhibitions, to develop a pedagogical practice, to expand the field of photography as art and to anticipate the future directions of artistic trends. Now, we revisit these four principles to look ahead, from a history already consolidated in Brazil and abroad.
The MAM trajectory also shows the fertility of its foundations, which gave rise to institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo. Founded in 1963, MAC USP received the collection formed at MAM and maintained its seminal values. Thus, we unite both museums in this commemorative exhibition, indicating a brotherhood between the institutions and the sharing of the same origin.
The show is organized in two parts. In the Paulo Figueiredo Room, there are works collected during the initial period of the MAM, between 1949 and 1963. In the Great Hall there are works of the collections of MAM and MAC USP acquired after that date. Connecting both rooms, a timeline circumstance this story.
In each of the rooms, the same four values guide the exhibition nuclei:
1- Formation of collection from prospective exhibitions
The Paulo Figueiredo Hall shows works acquired at the Biennial of São Paulo, an event created by MAM in 1951; in the Great Hall there are works from the Panoramas of the Brazilian Art of MAM and, from MAC USP, from the Young National Print, Young National Drawing, Young Contemporary Art and recent acquisition programs.
2- Pedagogical Mission
In the Paulo Figueiredo Room are reproduced colored reproductions used in didactic shows held in the Municipal Library of São Paulo in collaboration with the MAM, between the late 1940s and the 1950s; on the facade of MAM is exposed the work The museum is a school, by Luis Camnitzer, acquired on the occasion of the commemorative exhibition of the twenty years of the educational sector of the museum, in 2016.
3- Expansion of Photography as Art
The Paulo Figueiredo Room contains records of the 1949 Thomaz Farkas exhibition, the first dedicated to modern photography in a Brazilian museum, while in the Sala Milú Villela are collected photographic works from both museums, MAM Photography Collectors Club.
4- The Contemporary Challenge The Paulo Figueiredo Room presents works that participated in the inaugural exhibition of MAM, From figurativism to abstractionism, which proposed a diagnosis of the development of modern art towards abstraction; in the Milú Villela Hall are works of the Multimedia exhibitions held by MAC USP in 1976, which had a pioneering role in hosting experimental productions in Brazilian museums, followed by works of the Ecological show held by MAM in 2010, which explains the line that the museum has been developing in the last ten years to face the challenges of the relationship between art and ecology, because we believe that this is a border area that brings urgent global challenges to contemporary culture.
MAM 70th Anniversary Exhibition
September 5 – December 16, 2018
The Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo
Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral, s/n° - Parque Ibirapuera
São Paulo - SP, 04094-000, Brazil