This long-term exhibition at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro proposes a journey through the history of modern and contemporary art in Brazil, in connection with the history of the institution itself. By bringing together fundamental works and artists from its collections, the exhibition offers an open route through artistic movements and experiments that have characterised art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and shows how these developments found impetus, space and resonance at the museum.
The featured artworks and artists testify to the plurality of artistic approaches in Brazilian art; beginning with the modernist project and its proposal for a distinctly Brazilian art at the start of the early twentieth century – the same project that years later led to the foundation of MAM Rio, in 1948. The exhibition is organised chronologically, with an exhibition design that revisits elements of modernist design, and is structured in sections that relate to categories established by the traditional historiography of Brazilian art.
This sequential narrative is challenged by works that escape timeframes and a design that encourages multiple pathways and transversal interpretations, widening the understanding of art and its histories. Throughout the exhibition, QR codes present texts and images from the museum’s archival collections, connecting the works with crucial moments in Brazilian art history that involved the institution and thus call attention to the processes that create meanings and ensure the relevance of artworks and artists.
MAM Rio houses one of the main art collections in Latin America. It comprises more than 3 million items, including artworks, documents and films. There are 16.000 artworks that are divided into three collections: the Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, the Joaquim Paiva Collection and the collection of the museum.
Since its founding, MAM Rio has established itself as one of Brazil’s foremost spaces dedicated to art and education, playing a fundamental role in the formation of the artistic field in the country. The museum is guided by a perspective on art and culture that recognises its social, educational and civic functions, and with this exhibition reaffirms its institutional commitment to democratising access to its collection.