Together with the Brazilian-American researcher Felix Toro, the project will investigate the experiences of the northern Brazilian state of Bahia in the 1950s and 1960s, specifically the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia during Lina Bo Bardi’s tenure (1959–1964); the Park School created by Anísio Teixeira, which houses the biggest collection of murals by modernist painters in Brazil along with many other unique works; and the Museum of the South Atlantic, a project which was interrupted before its inauguration as an “area museum”, i.e., an interdisciplinary museum whose role would be to investigate the territory of the South Atlantic.
Stemming from critical discussions about the role of the museum and education in the context of post-colonial, feminist, environmental, and other critiques of modernity and of the Enlightenment, the case of Bahia not only appears to be markedly different from what was happening in the rest of Brazil at the time but, more importantly, also a compelling subject that provides a basis from which to rethink art museums and education as a whole. Lina Bo Bardi’s Museum School, the Museum of the South Atlantic, the Park School, and the Bahia Biennials are some of the institutional expressions of an attempt to explore the specific conditions of the colonial margin as opposed to blindly copying the European models. Interestingly, they all emerged in the same city within a twenty-year period.
Combining field trips with archive research and practical workshops, the project aims to unearth the forgotten knowledge of Bahia, learn from it, use it as food for thought, and develop it further.