“O século dos museus”: produção e circulação de informações sobre museus brasileiros (1927–1958)

Abstract

It was not without reason that Mário Barata stated that the 20th century could be nominated as the “museums century”, motivated by the acknowledgment of the growth in the numbers of these institutions in Brazil, which arose their figures from nearly 06 (six) registered museums in 1908, to the astonishing amount of 1.225 (one thousand two hundred and twenty-five) near the end of the century, according to data published by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) regarding the year of 1988. This research then aimed to understand how certain strata of the Brazilian population, namely intellectuals, perceived the development of museums in the country and whether this perception influenced this same process. To this end, the collections of national newspapers held by the Brazilian National Library and made available in digitized versions in its Digital Brazilian Newspaper Library were investigated, as well as documents created by State agents such as IBGE, the Ministry of Health and Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and also documents produced by the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IICI), the International Museums Office, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Council of Museums. The analysis of the documents provided evidence of fruitful interaction between the fields related to museums, statistics, and intellectual cooperation on a transnational scale, mediated by multilateral international organizations, which allowed the construction of a narrative of a crossed history. This perspective pointed to the impulse of the production and circulation of information about Brazilian museums, in the country and abroad, in the form of statistics, periodicals and books, characterizing the period between 1927 and 1958. The investigation concluded that this process was guided by the work of intellectuals who eventually had agency in the three fields and worked in the national periodical press, favoring the construction of images of museums in Brazil and abroad, not rarely involving several experiences of time, allowing their activation in defense of different projects for the past, present, and future of the country. This research was funded by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) and is linked to the Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisa em Patrimônio e Memória (GEPPM/CNPq/UFC).