Permanent Forum: Art Museums; between the private and the public realms

In spite of having achieved great success both locally and abroad, the institutional context of Brazilian art is still very unstable. Important art museums in the country and even the “Fundação Bienal de São Paulo” suffer from frequent financial and political crisis. Nevertheless we have recently observed expressive changes and interventions in this vulnerable - yet extremely fruitful cultural landscape, such as: a) the expansion and renewal of cultural material resources, facilitated and financed by Cultural Incentive Laws and other public and private funds; b) the creation and strengthening of private institutions that represent the country's culture, both in the national and in the international scope; c) the emergence and growth of cultural institutions linked to large financial corporations; d) the existence of scattered attempts to update and renew the architectural and symbolic languages related to the current cultural apparatus, like museums, cultural institutes or centres.

The parameters of the changing and increasingly expanding Brazilian “cultural industry” are complex, fluctuating and vulnerable. The country is going through a transition, and it faces not only the idiosyncrasies of old institutional structures, but also the demands and challenges of a contemporary condition that asks for the internationalisation of culture and the development of professional skills within culture. Although the resources available - as a result of professional development and updating - are improving and growing, they still do not suffice to properly respond to the particularities and requirements of this “industry”. An editorial market that is still being consolidated and the small space allocated to cultural affairs on the printed media are not enough to generate and sustain critical and mobilizing debates. There are many important points to be discussed, but some of them deserve special attention. Permanent Forum is mainly concerned with problems that affect the agents, the processes and the means of the national art system, especially those concerning art museums - cultural “key conductors” that represent and perpetuate actions and creative production.

In Brazil’s mutant and fluid context, more inclined to the disarray than to the consolidation of cultural programs and policies capable of producing mid and long-term results, Permanent Forum: Art Museums; between the private and the public realms stands to promote the interaction of concerns and of positive and transforming actions associated to this system. Having as its backdrop not only the Brazilian local context but also the international one, its primary intention is to become a shared dimension for cultural institutions, their leaders, technical staff and other people that, directly or indirectly, are part of this cultural field. As a platform for critical discussion, the Forum thus intends to raise considerations and to provoke actions concerning the role of the Art Museum in times of ‘spectacularization’ and virtualisation of culture. This is its main goal. There is, however, a subliminal and formative objective: to contribute, in a significant and mobilizing manner, to the development of the visual arts cultural-political context by encouraging cultural interchanges within and beyond its national boundaries.

Permanent Forum is structured around interactive and real events (lectures, debates, seminars and workshops) and their unfolding in the virtual sphere, which take place in cultural spaces across the city of São Paulo and on a website specifically designed for that purpose <www.forumpermanente.org>. Permanent Forum will initially last for two years. Its future will result from the debate and development of the Forum itself.  Regular events will have the participation of renowned art professionals. Furthermore Permanent Forum intends to take advantage of the presence of directors, trustees, thinkers and national/international artists who often visit São Paulo. These specialists will occasionally be invited to present their ideas and experiences regarding the function and situation of the art museum today. All the events will be monitored and archived by Permanent Forum’s organizers. All edited materials will be available from the Forum’s website, where visitors will also be able to participate in a continuing online debate. In 2006, this cycle of lectures, workshops, seminars and meetings will close with an International Conference in ão Paulo with the presence of its main speakers, who will then discuss the programme’s goals for the future.

The discussion topics are directly related to the role and initiatives of the art museum today.

Among them are:

a) The limits, boundaries, interactions between the public and private cultural spheres;
b) The public museum today;
c) The role of the private initiative in shaping the contemporary cultural landscape;
d) The role of the audience in the contemporary museum;
e) The role of contemporary art in the revision of museum activities and policies;
f) Cultural policies directed to art museums and similar institutions;
g) Educational and cultural initiatives in museums;
h) The museum and its cross-disciplinary condition;
i) The art museum in the national museum system;
j) Urban museums versus local museums;
k) Museums and “spectacular” cultural events (among them the “Bienal de São Paulo”);
l) Networked art museums: integration, correspondences, interchanges;
m) The museum between material culture and new media virtual culture;
n) The art museum in the 21^st century;
o) The museum and the city;
p) Museum architecture, among others;

Permanent Forum started its programme in an experimental way in October 2003 with the presence of its first guest, Dr. Ulrich Krempel, director of the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Germany. His arrival coincided with the visit of London Tate Gallery director, Sir Nicholas Serrota to São Paulo. On that occasion it was possible to organize three distinct events centred around the role of the art museum today. The first consisted of a round-table - The Museum of the 21^st Century - that took place at the OCA pavilion in Ibirapuera Park, as a parallel activity to the group show A Bigger Splash: Tate’s British Art, 1960  [1] .

Serrota talked about the main achievements of the cultural policies he has been implementing since the late eighties, such as the physical expansion of the museum <www.tate.org.uk>. During its first phase, still in the eighties, two branches were built in British soil but away from the Capital: one in St. Ives and one in Liverpool. However, what really caught the attention of the media and of the cultural community all over the world was the massive conversion of a former Bankside power plant by River Thames which opened to the public on May 2000: the Tate Modern. Paradoxically, however, Serrota argued that the Tate's model of cultural ‘spectacularization’, that competes side-by-side with the Guggenheim’s polemic cultural-commercial franchising program, should not be overrated. An antidote to this trend, he suggests, would be the ‘relativization’ and regionalization of museological policies. This statement endorsed Moacir dos Anjos’ speech, who tried to show how the cultural policies driven to great events and art exhibitions, which have dominated the national and international cultural scenario in the past years, undermine the process of consolidation of local museums, as is the case of the MAMAM in Recife <www.mamam.art.br>. On his turn, Krempel also emphasized the importance and the role that medium and small sized art museums have in shaping cultural contexts in places that do not integrate the European cultural and tourist-driven circuit, as is the case of  Hannover, a medium-sized town in North Germany. The Hannover Sprengel Museum is an exemplary case in that sense <www.sprengel-museum.de>. The museum has a representative collection of European and American modern and contemporary art, and develops activities directed to local and neighbouring communities, making it a point of reference in the region.

Following the model proposed by Permanent Forum, Ulrich Krempel leaded two other activities in October 2003: a lecture and a workshop. The lecture, “The Constitution Of A Collection As A Political Act”, was delivered in October 15 at the Goethe Institute in São Paulo. It focused on the “saga” of the Sprengel's modern art collection, which was donated to the city of Hannover in 1969 and led to the construction of the museum, opened in 1979. The Sprengels started collecting art at the height of the mid-war period in Germany, a time of extreme adversity for modern art, and acquired works by artists linked mainly to German Expressionism. Krempel explored the importance of this act, not only to the establishment of the museum, but also for the development and modernisation of cultural policies. Marcelo Araújo, director of the São Paulo's Pinacoteca (see note 2), invited to act as respondent, highlighted the oddness of this “saga” and its historical significance. The workshop, held at the Pinacoteca, provided the participants with detailed information on the museum’s operations, infrastructure and cultural initiatives. Motivated by the guest’s generosity and informality, the public – mainly formed by professionals tied to cultural institutions – felt comfortable to ask about several of the museum’s day-to-day aspects. This exchange proved to be very fruitful and shall be further explored in future editions of the Forum.

Martin Grossmann
São Paulo, 04 de junho de 2004