São Paulo Museum of Art

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The São Paulo Museum of Art
Established	1947
Location	Avenida Paulista, São Paulo, Brazil
Visitor figures	468,000[1] (2006)
Director	Julio Neves
Curator	Teixeira Coelho
Website	www.masp.art.br

The São Paulo Museum of Art (in Portuguese, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, or MASP) is an important fine-art museum located on Paulista Avenue in the city of São Paulo, in Brazil. Famous for an imposing building which houses its collections, it is an authentic landmark of the largest Brazilian city.

Listed as a non-profit organization, the museum is renowned for its extraordinary collection gathered since the end of World War II. Internationally recognized for its diversity and quality, the museum's holdings are considered the most important of Latin America and all Southern Hemisphere^[2][3], with thousands of works ranging in period from antiquity to contemporary art.

Contents 1 History 1.1 General context 1.2 The first steps (1947-1957) 1.3 Consolidation of the museum 2 The building 3 The collection 3.1 The formation of the collection 3.2 Overview of the collection 3.2.1 Highlights 4 Theft 4.1 First attempt 4.2 Second attempt 5 Gallery 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

[edit] History

[edit] General context

At the end of the 1940s, the state of São Paulo was already producing a large scale of consumer goods in response to the needs of the country. Regarding the artistic scene, however, Brazilian's most notable realization had been the Week of Modern Art, in 1922, not fully comprehended by the Brazilian society, yet. In this context, Assis Chateaubriand, founder and owner of the Diários Associados (Associated Dailies), the largest media and press conglomerate in Brazil, idealized the creation of a museum in innovating patterns, which should work as a dynamic center of cultural diffusion and creation. Chateaubriand intended to establish the museum in Rio de Janeiro, but he chose São Paulo because he believed it would be easier to raise the necessary resources to found the museum in this city, since São Paulo was experiencing a prosperous moment as consequence of the growing industrialization and coffee plantations.

At that time, the European art market was deeply influenced by the end of World War II, making it possible to acquire great works of art for reasonable prices. With that purpose, Chateaubriand invited Pietro Maria Bardi, an Italian professor and art critic - and also a skilled art dealer - to help him in the gathering of the collection. Planning to lead the project for only a year, Bardi would dedicate the rest of his life to it. He moved to Brazil, together with his wife, the architect Lina Bo Bardi, and brought along his private collection of Italian paintings and antiquities.

[edit] The first steps (1947-1957)

The museum was inaugurated and opened to public visitation in October 2, 1947, displaying the first acquisitions, amongst which canvases by Picasso and Rembrandt. In these first years of activity, the museum was located on the first floor of the Associated Dailies headquarters. Lina Bo Bardi was in charge of adapting the building to the needs of the museum, dividing it into four distinct areas: art gallery, a didactic exposition room about history of art, temporary exhibition room and an auditorium. MASP was the first Brazilian institution interested in acquiring works of modern art. The museum would quickly become a meeting point for artists, students and intellectuals, attracted not only by its holdings, but also because of the workshops and courses about history of art, temporary exhibitions of national and foreigner artists, and the educative program, open to receive manifestations of multiple fields of art, such as theater, cinema and music.

In the 1950s the museum increased its didactic performance, creating the Institute of Contemporary Art (offering workshops of engraving, drawing, painting, sculpture, dance and industrial design), the Publicity School (presently Superior School of Propaganda and Marketing), organizing debates about cinema and literature and creating a juvenile orchestra and a ballet company. The courses were frequently given by important names of the Brazilian artistic scene, such as the painters Lasar Segall and Roberto Sambonet, the architects Gian Carlo Palanti and Lina Bo Bardi, the sculptor August Zamoyski, and the motion-picture technician Alberto Cavalcanti.

Along with the amplification of the educational program, the museum watched the growth of the collection’s importance and the international recognizing of the institution. Between 1953 and 1957, a selection of 100 masterpieces of the museum's collection traveled throughout European museums, such as Musée de l'Orangerie (Paris) and the Tate Gallery (London), in a series of exhibitions organized with the intent of consolidating the collection. In 1957, the collection was also displayed in the United States, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in the Toledo Museum of Art. In the following year, the museum's holdings were presented in other Brazilian institutions, such as the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, in Rio de Janeiro.

The high-level exhibitions promoted by the museum in those first years also gathered large notoriety, causing the increasing of the attendance - making possible to develop an interested, and rising nucleus of visitors.

[edit] Consolidation of the museum

The collection's rising amount and importance soon required the construction of a building to headquarter the museum. With that purpose, the São Paulo City Hall donated a plot of ground, previously occupied by the Belvedere Trianon – a traditional meeting point of the city’s wealthy people, which had been demolished in 1951 - to host the first edition of São Paulo Art Biennial. The ground on Paulista Avenue had been donated to the City Hall with the condition that the view to the downtown area should be preserved, throughout the valley of the Nove de Julho Avenue.

Lina Bo Bardi conceived the new building of São Paulo Museum of Art. In order to preserve the required view of the downtown area, Lina Bo Bardi idealized a sustained building, supported by four big pillars. The construction is considered to be unique worldwide for its peculiarity: the main body of the building stands on four lateral supporting pillars, generating a free area of 74 meters underneath the sustained building. Constructed between 1956 and 1968, the new site of the museum was inaugurated in November 7th by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

Assis Chateaubriand would not get to see the inauguration of the new building. He passed away months before, victimized by thrombosis. The media empire which he raised had also been facing difficulties since the beginning of the 1960s. Growing debts and the competition in the media market by Roberto Marinho's press conglomerate – caused the scarcity of the funds which had permitted the gathering of the collection.

The overthrow of Diários Associados and the death of its founder caused the necessity of using public funds to pay the museum debts contracted with foreign institutions. During the government of president Juscelino Kubitschek, a bank named Caixa Econômica Federal granted a loan to honor the museum's international obligations and securing the loan with the museum's collection. Some years later, in the 1970s, the debt with the Brazilian government was negotiated and finally paid off.

In 1969, in response to a request by the museum, the Brazilian Institute for Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) registered the museum's holdings as a national heritage. Then, the collection became inalienable. It is part of Brazilian public patrimony, and any movement of works of the collection to outside of the country needs the authorization by IPHAN.

Notwithstanding the financial problems of the institution, São Paulo Museum of Art undergoes an even greater growing of its international recognizing. In the 1970s the museum gathered notoriety in the Eastern Hemisphere by organizing many exhibitions using selected works of its collection at Japanese museums. In 1973, the collection was presented at the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Brasília. MASP's collection was presented again in Japan in 1978/79, 1982/83, 1990/91, and 1995. In 1992, works of the French school and Brazilian landscapes were exhibited in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, in Santiago, Chile, and in the Biblioteca Luís Angel Aragón, in Bogotá.

[edit] The building

The present building of the museum was constructed by the São Paulo City Hall and inaugurated in 1968, with the presence of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. It is famous for is remarkable brutalist structure and it is considered one of the landmarks of the Brazilian modern architecture. The building should be raised in the formerly site of Belvedere Trianon, on Paulista Avenue from where it would be possible to watch the downtown area and the Cantareira Mountains. Joaquim Eugênio de Lima, the engineer who donated the plot of ground to the City Hall, tied the donation to an express commitment that no edification should ever be constructed in that plot that would harm the amplitude of the view. Therefore, the project demanded an underground construction or, otherwise, a sustained one. The architect Lina Bo Bardi and engineer José Carlos Figueiredo Ferraz chose both alternatives. They conceived an underground block as well as a sustained structure, which would stand eight meters above the floor, with the use of four pillars connected by two huge concrete beams. Underneath those beams there lay what was considered a boldness, meaning a free space of 74 meters between the pillars and underneath the beams; the largest in the world at that time^[4]. The building inaugurated the so called protented technique reinforced concrete in Brazil.

In the construction of approximately 10,000 sq. meters there are - besides the permanent and temporary exhibition rooms – library, photo gallery, film gallery, video gallery, two auditoriums, restaurant, a store, workshop rooms, administrative offices and a technical reserved area. The building’s installations and finishing are homely, as Lina Bo herself describes: “Concrete in sight, whitewash, flagstone flooring covering the great Civic Hall, tempered glass, plastic walls. Industrial black rubber flooring covering inner spaces. The belvedere is a ‘square’, with plants and flowers around, paved with parallelepipeds, according to Iberian-Brazilian tradition. There are also water spaces, small water mirrors with aquatic plants^[5]. […] I didn’t search for beauty. I’ve searched for freedom”^[6]. In 2003, the building was also registered as national patrimony by Brazilian Institute for Historic and Artistic Heritage.

In the museographic area, Lina Bo Bardi also innovated by using tempered crystal sheets leaned on concrete blocks bases as display supports for the paintings. The intention is to imitate the position of the canvas on the painter’s easel. In the reverse of these supports, which are not used anymore, there were planks with information about the painter and the work. Paradoxically, the museum abandoned this model of exhibition at the same time when, at the end of the 1990s, it starts to be noticed and implemented by foreigner institutions.

Between 1996 and 2001, the actual administration of the museum undertook a vast and controversy reform. Notwithstanding the indispensable restoration of the general structure, the architect and current director of the institution Julio Neves determined the substitution of the original floor conceived by Lina Bo, the installation of a second elevator, the construction of a third underground floor, and the substitution of the water mirrors for gardens. Many architects allege that the reform caused a profound discharacterization of Lina’s original project^[7].

[edit] The collection

[edit] The formation of the collection

The main body of the collection was gathered between 1947 and 1960. Pietro Maria Bardi, formerly owner of commercial galleries in Milan and Rome, was in charge of searching and selecting the works which should be acquired, while Chateaubriand had to look for donors and patrons who shared his dream of endowing the country with a museum of international standard. Although many spontaneous donations have been registered, Chateaubriand gained reputation of using bold methods of persuasion. Endorsed by the influence of his Diários Associados, he used to negotiate with the announcers the gathering of funds. After that, he rewarded the donors with the title of patrons, celebrating each new acquisition with banquets, speeches and even students parades in the streets of São Paulo, as happened at the arrival of Van Gogh’s The Student.

The international art market was passing through propitious moment for those who had funds to acquire high-quality works of art – there were many of them available in view of the end of the war, and Brazil was passing through a moment of prosperity. The works of art were generally acquired in traditional and esteemed fine art auction houses, such as Christie's, Marlborough, Sotheby's, Knoedler, Seligman and Wildenstein.

The bold methods used by Chateaubriand to finance the formation of the collection produced many critics. Along with these, there were others related to the fact that the museum acquired works of art without the proper corroboration of authenticity. This impression was endorsed by the fact that the museum was at the time one of the major buyers in the international market. Unlike other institutions which acquisitions depended of approval of a curators council, the São Paulo Museum of Art usually acquired its pieces quickly, sometimes by telegram. Thanks to this agility the museum was able to gather important masterpieces, even when facing private collectors or institutions of major renown and bigger financial resources.

At the end of the 1960s, Chateaubriand’s press conglomerate was facing troubles, with growing debts and Roberto Marinho’s media companies competition. The financial difficulties of Diários Associados caused the decreasing of the museum’s financial resources. Thus, after 13 years of great acquisitions, the museum started to increase its collection only by spontaneous donations of artists, companies and private collectors.

[edit] Overview of the collection

The São Paulo Museum of Art collection is considered the largest and more comprehensive collection of Western art in Latin America and all Southern Hemisphere^[2][3]. Among the 8,000 works of the museum, the collection of European paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, and decorative arts stands out. The French and Italian schools are mostly strong represented, forming the main body of the collection, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, Flemish, Dutch, English and German masters. The museum also keeps a significant collection of Brazilian art and Brasiliana, which witnesses the development of Brazilian art from 17th Century to nowadays. Still in the context of Western art, the museum possesses important holdings of Latin and North American art. In a smaller scale, the museum’s holdings contemplate representative objects of many periods and distinct non-Western civilizations – such as African and Asian arts – and others which stand out for their archeological, historic and artistic relevance, like the select collections of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquities, besides other artifacts of Pre-Columbian cultures and medieval European art.

[edit] Highlights

• Italian School: Raphael, Botticelli, Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Perugino, Piero di Cosimo, Guido Reni.
• French School: François Clouet, Poussin, Nattier, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec.
• Flemish, Dutch and German Schools: Hieronymus Bosch, Memling, Cranach, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Van Dornicke.
• English School: Reynolds, Constable, Gainsborough, Turner.
• Modern and Contemporary Art: Picasso, Leger, Modigliani, Matisse, Chagall, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Andy Warhol, Jim Dine.
• Brazilian Art: Frans Post, Nicolas Taunay, Tarsila do Amaral, Candido Portinari, Di Cavalcanti, Anita Malfatti, Lasar Segall.
• Latin and North American Art: Torres Garcia, Diego Rivera, Siqueiros, Calder, Gilbert Stuart

The museum also has some small collections of photographies, costumes and textiles, kitsch objects, etc.

[edit] Theft

[edit] First attempt

On October 29, 2007, two men overpowered security officers and tried to reach the second floor of the museum, where the desired paintings were located. Both men ran away without taking anything.

[edit] Second attempt

On December 20, 2007, around 5:00 in the morning, three men invaded the museum and took two paintings, considered to be among the most valuable of the museum: O lavrador de café [1], by Cândido Portinari, and the Portrait of Suzanne Bloch by Pablo Picasso. The whole action took about three minutes.

The estimated value of the paintings is around R$120 million reais (approximately 70 million dollars). The museum collection is uninsured and it has no movement sensors among the galleries. Security cameras could only produce unclear images of the raid because they lacked infrared capability.

The pictures have been recovered by the police of São Paulo on the 8 of January, 2008, in the city of Ferraz de Vasconcelos, in the Greater São Paulo. The names of the two suspects have been withheld. After the incident, the director of the MASP promised to improve the security of the museum^[8].

[edit] Gallery

Pietro Perugino (Italian, 1447/49-1523) St. Sebastian bound to a column, c.1500/10.	Titian (Italian, 1488/90-1576) Portrait of Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo, 1552.	Tintoretto (Italian, 1518-1594) Pietà, 1560/65.	Velazquez (Spanish, 1599-1660) Portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares, 1624.
Delacroix (French, 1798-1863) The autumn - Bacchus and Ariadne, 1856/63.	Corot (French, 1796-1875) Gypsy Girl with a mandolin, 1874.	Degas (French, 1834-1917) Four dancers in scene, 1885/90.	Hans Memling (Flemish, 1435-1494) The mourning Virgem with St. John the Baptist and the pious women of Galilee, 1485/90.
Hans Holbein (Flemish, 1497-1543) The poet Henry Howard, Count of Surrey, c. 1542.	Van Dyck (Flemish, 1599-1641) Portrait of Willian Howard, 1638/40.	Thomas Lawrence (British, 1769-1830) The sons of Sir Samuel Fludyer, 1806.	Van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890) The Student, 1888.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Art museum
• Pavilion (structure)

[edit] External links

• Museum site

Coordinates: 23°33′40″S, 46°39′21″W