The space occupied by an art museum is unlike any other. Especially modern art museums, as they were mostly housed in buildings built especially for them. It was precisely through projects made for these museums that great names in architecture established their legacies. This is the case of Lina Bo Bardi (1914 – 1992), the Italian-Brazilian architect responsible for the architectural design of MASP, MAM Bahia and the current building of MAM São Paulo, her last museographic work.
Even though it was one of the first modern art museums ever created in the world, MAM São Paulo never had headquarters built especially for it, occupying a series of adapted spaces throughout its history. During the first years, it was installed in the Diários Associados building on Sete de Abril Street, in a space designed by the architect Vilanova Artigas. Afterwards, MAM occupied part of the Matarazzo Pavilion, when the São Paulo Biennial was still an event held by the museum. After a period of reorganization due to the donation of its collection to USP [University of São Paulo] in 1963, MAM resumed its activities in 1969 in new headquarters: the building under the marquee of the Ibirapuera Park.
In 2023, MAM identified a drawing by the architect among the documents kept by the library and resumed the research on the renovation carried out by Lina Bo Bardi forty years ago. It is a study for an exhibition device that she proposed with the renovation project in 1982. The panels of this device would form an apparent line parallel to the museum’s facade, emphasizing the continuity of the exhibition space.Considering the limitations that these fixed panels would bring to the exhibitions, the museum’s board of directors at the time chose to not carry them out.
Given the importance of this drawing for the architect’s legacy and her relationship with the building occupied by MAM, the museum decided to incorporate it into the collection, along with the other works on paper that it stores. In the exhibition, the drawing is presented with other materials referring to Lina Bo Bardi‘s renovation of MAM, including floor plan studies, photos of the building mockup, and other documents that record the previous and the subsequent appearance of the building. With this, we seek to better understand the work and legacy left by Lina, who, with the success of her museographic brand, transformed MAM into a continuous space with the Ibirapuera Park.
More information on the event can be found here.