Experimental Art on Display
As experimentation impregnated the processes of education and the dynamics of creation and exchange between artists, in the late 1960s MAM Rio also became an exhibition space for experimental artistic practices – “new languages”, or practices that resulted from new ways of understanding art, often related to research and criticism. The earlier appearances of such artistic practices in the museum are the result of the change in the languages and attitudes of the work of the artists who had gained access to the Salons or other exhibitions.
Eventually, in response to the artists and critics’ demands, in 1975 a space was created on the third floor of the museum to host these practices. There, 38 solo exhibitions are organised over three years, including artists such as Carlos Zilio, Cildo Meireles, Ivens Machado, Lauro Cavalcanti, Letícia Parente, Lygia Pape, Regina Vater, Sonia Andrade and Waltercio Caldas.
The exhibitions were selected by the Comissão de Planejamento Cultura (Cultural Planning Commission) based on the artists’ proposals, resulting in exhibitions conceived as projects. Along with other individual exhibitions that were also presented those years, these exhibitions made MAM Rio a platform for independent creation, outside the logic of the market, and offered a complex panorama of the art developed in the city by several generations.