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São Paulo Museum of Art

Art museum in São Paulo, Brazil

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The museum was founded in 1947 by Assis Chateaubriand and Pietro Maria Bardi, and is maintained as a non-profit institution. MASP distinguished itself by its involvement in several important initiatives concerning museology and art education in Brazil, as well as for its pioneering role as a cultural center. It was also the first Brazilian museum to display post-World War II art.

The museum is internationally recognized for its collection of European art, considered to be one of the finest in both Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere. It also houses an important collection of Brazilian art, prints and drawings, as well as smaller collections of African and Asian art, antiquities, decorative arts, and others, amounting to more than 8,000 pieces. MASP also contains one of the largest art libraries in the country. The entire collection was placed on the Brazilian National Heritage list by Brazil's Institute of History and Art.

History

General context

At the end of the 1940s, the Brazilian economy was going through large structural changes as a result of accelerating industrialization. The city of São Paulo subsequently established itself as the most important industrial hub in the country. Prior to that time, São Paulo's role in modern art had been marked by the Week of Modern Art of 1922. Despite the importance this event had enjoyed in the 1920s, Modernism wouldn't draw much attention of city dwellers and institutions in the following decades. There was only one art museum in São Paulo, the Pinacoteca do Estado, solely devoted to Academic art, and a commercial gallery.

Assis Chateaubriand, founder and owner of the Diários Associados, or "Associated Daily Press", the largest media and press conglomerate of Brazil at the time, was one of the most influential individuals of this period. In the late 1940s, Chateaubriand started a campaign to acquire masterpieces to form an art collection of international renown in Brazil. He intended to host the museum in Rio de Janeiro, but ultimately chose São Paulo, where he believed it would be easier to gather the necessary funds, since this city was enjoying a very prosperous moment. At the same time, the European art market had been deeply influenced by the end of World War II, making it possible to acquire fine artworks for reasonable prices.

With the help of Pietro Maria Bardi, an Italian professor, critic, art dealer and former owner of galleries in Milan and Rome, Chateaubriand created a "Museum of Classical and Modern Art". Though he initially planned to lead the project for only a year, Bardi dedicated the rest of his life to it. He moved to Brazil together with his wife, the architect Lina Bo Bardi, and brought along his library and his private art collection.

Beginnings (1947–1957)

The museum was inaugurated and opened to the public on 2 October 1947, displaying the first acquisitions, among them canvases by Picasso and Rembrandt. In these first years of activity, the museum was located on the upper floors of the Diarios Associados headquarters in the Centro neighborhood of São Paulo. Architect Lina Bo Bardi was in charge of adapting the building to the needs of the museum, dividing it into four distinct areas: an art gallery, a didactic exposition room about the history of art, a temporary exhibition room and an auditorium.

MASP was the first Brazilian art museum interested in acquiring works of modern art. The museum quickly became a meeting point for artists, students and intellectuals, attracted not only by its holdings, but also by the workshops and art courses it offered.

In the 1950s, the museum created 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 youth 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 expanded its collection and began to be recognized internationally. Between 1953 and 1957, a selection of 100 masterpieces housed in the museum 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 City and in the Toledo Museum of Art. The following year, the holdings of MASP were exhibited at other Brazilian venues, such as the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, in Rio de Janeiro. This established the museum on a global level.

Consolidation of the museum

The collection's rising growth 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 Paulistano wealthy, 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 and the valley of the Nove de Julho Avenue be preserved.

The new MASP building was the brainchild of Lina Bo Bardi. To preserve the required view of the downtown area, Bardi idealized a building suspended above ground, supported by four massive rectangular columns made of concrete. 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 on 7 November by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom during her visit to Brazil.

Assis Chateaubriand would not get to see the inauguration of the new building. He died months before, a victim of thrombosis. The media empire which he developed 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 made the government intervene and pay for some of the debts contracted with foreign institutions. During the government of president Juscelino Kubitschek, Caixa Econômica Federal granted a loan to honor the financial obligations of the institution and secured the loan with its art collections. Years later, in the 1970s, the museum's debt with the Brazilian government was negotiated and paid off.

In 1969, in response to a request by the museum, the Brazilian Institute for Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) registered MASP's holdings as part of the national heritage.

In the 1970s the museum gained fame 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.

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