As a first step in the plan to renew the presentation of the collection, the Pinacoteca’s team aims to promote a series of conversations around the displaying of national art collections in the global context.
At this time, we find a methodological and conceptual approach to the issue the most productive. Gathering scholars and museum leaders to present reflections, experiences and case studies will allow us to drawn guidelines to face the specificities of Pinacoteca’s collection and of Brazilian art stories in a global perspective. Our goal is that this gathering will promote a reflection on the display of collections upon it in the light of recent revisions in art history, such as the post-colonial debate, center-periphery world dichotomies, erudite and non-erudite art, gender and ethnicity.
Therefore, Pinacoteca will host a two-day symposium at the museum, from September 20th to 21st. We outline a set of three main issues that we propose to be addressed individually by one of the three sessions of the seminar:
Session 1 will be devoted to the question: How museums can question and expand artistic canons? Is it possible to go beyond national stories to tell global stories of art? Session 2 will be addressing the current predominance of contemporary art in the art museum world, posing the question, “all art history is contemporary history?”, reflecting upon some experiences of contemporary art intervention in historic collections. Session 3 will be reflecting on the specific ways we narrate through exhibitions, through chronological, thematic, conceptual or comparative approaches.
September 20th, 2018
10h – 10h15- Opening session and welcoming remarks.
Jochen Volz, Diretor Geral, Pinacoteca de São Paulo.
10h20 – 11h10 - Session 1. : How museums can question and expand artistic canons? Is it possible to go beyond national stories to tell global stories of art?
Opening Conference: "Museum as Textum, Museum as Image, Museum as Agency," Eva Maria Troelenberg, University of Utrecht, Holland.
11h10 – 12h- Q & A
12h – 14h Lunch time – Gallery Visit
14h-16h30 – Session 2. All art history is contemporary history? Contemporary art interventions in historical narratives.
Panel: Agustin Pérez Rubio, Carla Zaccagnini, artist and Jochen Volz, Pinacoteca de São Paulo.
16h30-18h – Q & A
September 21st, 2018
10h -10h50 – Session 3. Ways of narrating art history in museums: comparativisms, conceptualisms and temporalities on display.
Panel: Naine Terena, UEMT, Helouise Costa, MAC-USP.
10h50 – 12h –Q & A
12h-14h Lunch time – Gallery Visit.
14h-16h Session 3 Ways of narrating art history in museums: comparativisms, conceptualisms and temporalities on display.
Closing Conference: "Curating Within and Across National Boundaries: Thoughts on Comparative Mode," Chika Okeke-Agulu, Princeton University, USA.
16h-17h – Q & A
17h-17h30 – Closing remarks, Valeria Piccoli and Fernanda Pitta, Pinacoteca de São Paulo.
PARTICIPANTS:
Jochen Volz is the General Director of Pinacoteca de São Paulo and the curator of the Brazilian Pavilion at the 57th Biennale di Venezia (2017). He was the chief curator of the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016). Between 2012 and 2015 he was Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Galleries in London. Prior, he was a curator at the Instituto Inhotim, Minas Gerais, since 2004, where he has served as General Director between 2005 and 2007 and Artistic Director between 2007 and 2012. Furthermore, he has contributed to many exhibitions throughout the world, including Terra Comunal – Marina Abramović in sesc Pompeia, São Paulo (2015), Planos de fuga, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo (2012), Olafur Eliasson – Your Body of Work as part of the 17th International Festival of Contemporary Art – sesc Videobrasil in the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, in sesc Pompeia and sesc Belenzinho, São Paulo (2011), The Spiral and the Square at Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, at Gråmølna Kunstmuseum, Trondheim, and at Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand (2011), the 1st Aichi Triennale in Nagoya (2010) and the presentation of Cinthia Marcelle at the Biennale de Lyon (2007). In 2009, he organized Fare Mondi / Making Worlds, the international section of the 53rd International Venice Biennale together with Daniel Birnbaum. In 2006, he guest-curated for the 27th São Paulo Biennial a special exhibition project in homage to Marcel Broodthaers with Juan Araujo, Mabe Bethônico, Marcel Broodthaers, Marilá Dardot, Tacita Dean, Meschac Gaba, Goshka Macuga, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Haegue Yang. Between 2001 and 2004, he was curator of Portikus Frankfurt am Main, where he organized individual exhibitions with Cildo Meireles, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Gilbert & George, Janet Cardiff, Jason Rhoades, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Philippe Parreno, Renée Green, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Rivane Neuenschwander and Simon Starling, amongst others. As a critic, he is writing for magazines, catalogues, and is contributing editor to Frieze.
Eva-Maria Troelenberg studied art history, history and communications at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Venice International University. 2007: Research Assistant / Doctoral Candidate at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. 2007-2009: Postgraduate Fellow of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. 2010: Completed dissertation on the Munich "Exhibition of Masterpieces of Muhammadan Art" (LMU Munich). 2010-2011: Postdoc Fellow of the KHI project "Connecting Art Histories in the Museum. The Mediterranean and Asia 400-1650" (in cooperation with the State Museums in Berlin / Museum of Islamic Art). Since September 2011: Head of the Max Planck Research Group "Objects in the Contact Zone: The cross-cultural Life of Things" at Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. Teaching assignments at LMU Munich, University of Vienna and at the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context", University of Heidelberg. Visiting professorships at University of Munich (2013, History of Islamic Arts) and Zürich University (2016/17, Modern and Contemporary Art History). 2017: Visiting Scholar at Global Asian Series (GLASS), Leiden University. Since March 2018 Chair for modern and contemporary art history, Utrecht University.
Carla Zaccagnini was born in 1973 in Buenos Aires. In 1981 her family relocated to Brazil. She lives and works between São Paulo, Malmö and Copenhagen. Zaccagnini received her BFA in 1995 from the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado in São Paulo. She studied with artist Nelson Leirner, who encouraged her exploration of theoretical questions through artistic practice. Zaccagnini also received an MA in Visual Poetics from the Universidade de São Paulo in 2004. Zaccagnini views her activities as an artist, curator, and critic as mutually constitutive forms of inquiry that overlap to form a conceptually driven holistic art practice. She works with a variety of media and techniques—from drawing, installation, performance, text, and video, to exhibition curating—in order to explore what she characterizes as a strategy of displacement. By recontextualizing existing objects, and ideas, Zaccagnini’s work prompts viewers to question the limitations of language and representation, the fallibility of perception, and the construction of knowledge.
Agustin Pérez Rubio was born in Valencia, Spain in 1972. He has a degree in art history from the Universidad de Valencia and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Università di Torino. He has curated over one hundred and fifty exhibitions at important museums and art centers, biennales, etc. mainly in Europe and Latin America. Before he was Chief Curator and Director of MUSAC 2003- 2013, he organized monographic exhibitions of major artists like Pierre Huyghe, Julie Mehretu, Dora García, Pipiloti Rist, SANAA, Elmgreen and Dragset, Harun Farocki, and Lara Almarcegui among others. He also we the responsible for the contemporary MUSAC Collection with more than 1.600 artwork. Later, as an independent curator, he curated projects that include solo shows by artists such as Superflex, Sophie Calle, Rosangela Rennó, Carlos Garaicoa, and many group shows thematically related to gender, linguistics, architecture, and politics. He was the Artistic Director of MALBA, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires from May 2014 to June 2018, where he developed a socio-political programme dedicated to gender and feminist issues. In addition, Pérez Rubio worked together with Andrea Giunta, on the curatorial script of MALBA’s collection titled VERBOAMERICA a postcolonial revision of the Collection. Recently, he has curated solo shows of artists such as Jorge Macchi, Yoko Ono, Carlos Motta, Alexander Apóstol and the retrospective show of the collective General Idea. He is currently a member of the board of CIMAM (2017-2019) and Istambul Biennale. Recently he has been appointed as the curator for the Chilean Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2019 where he will present the work of Voluspa Jarpa.
Naine Terena (Terena/Aruak) has a Ph.D. in Education by PUC/SP, and a Master in Arts from the Unb/DF. She was a Pos-Doc fellow in Education at UFMT and PPGE/Unemat. She works as a publicist, and teaches at the Catholic University of Mato Grosso. Her company, Oráculo Comunicação, develops educational and cultural activities together with indigenous and social movements. She has an outstanding profile in social media, actively promoting indigenous rights and events. Her current research focuses on Technologies of communication and social movements (especially indigenous), arts, the body and narratives.
Helouise Costa is Associate Professor and Curator at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, where she works since 1993. She advises thesis and dissertations at the Programa de Pós-Graduação Interunidades em Estética e História da Arte and the Programa de Pós-Graduação Interunidades em Museologia, at Universidade de São Paulo. Among her books are, “A fotografia moderna no Brasil” (São Paulo: CosacNaify, 2004) and “As origens do fotojornalismo no Brasil: um olhar sobre O Cruzeiro” (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Moreira Salles, 2012). She curated, among others, "MAM 70" (2018); "A arte degenerada de Lasar Segall: perseguição à arte moderna em tempos de guerra"(2017-2018); “Fronteiras incertas: arte e fotografia no acervo do MAC USP” (2013-2014); “Rafael França: entre mídias” (2014) and “As origens do fotojornalismo no Brasil: um olhar sobre O Cruzeiro” (2012-2014). Her research interests are modern photography and history of exhibitions.
Chika Okeke-Agulu is Professor of African and African Diaspora art at Princeton University. His books include Obiora Udechukwu: Line, Image, Text (Skira Editore, 2016); Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria (Duke, 2015); and (with Okwui Enwezor), Contemporary African Art Since 1980 (Damiani, 2010). He is co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, and maintains the blog Ọfọdunka. Okeke-Agulu has (co-)organized several art exhibitions, including El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale (Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2019), Who Knows Tomorrow (Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2010), 5th Gwangju Biennale (Gwangju, 2004), The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994 (Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, 2001), Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa (Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1995), Nigerian section, First Johannesburg Biennale, 1995). As an art critic, his writings have appeared in The Guardian (Lagos), Daily Times (Lagos), Artforum International (New York), The New York Times, and The Huffington Post. Among his many awards and prizes are: Honorable Mention, The Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication (triennial) Award (Arts Council of African Studies Association, 2017); The Melville J. Herskovits Prize for the most important scholarly work in African Studies published in English during the preceding year (African Studies Association, 2016); and Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism (College Art Association, 2016).
Valeria Piccoli is Chief Curator at Pinacoteca de São Paulo. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of São Paulo on 19th and early 20th-century Brazilian art. Piccoli has collaborated on international projects such as Terra Brasilis (Brussels, 2011) and is co-curator of Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic (Toronto/Bentonville/São Paulo, 2015-2016), together with Georgiana Uhlyarik and Peter John Brownlee. Her current research focuses on how museums’ displays of their collections can incorporate recent debates on post-colonialism, gender and race, among other contemporary issues.
Fernanda Pitta is Senior Curator at Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and Lecturer in the History of Art at the Escola da Cidade, in São Paulo. She has a Ph.D. in art history from the Universidade de São Paulo. Her research interests focus primarily on 19th Century Brazilian Art in a transnational and comparative perspective, centered in a critical approach to the different paradigms of national art. She also writes regularly on modern and contemporary art. She contributes to scholarly journals on Brazilian art and art historiography. Her latest curatorial project focuses on the social construction of the artist’s image in 19th- and early 20th-century Brazilian art. She is currently an International Curators Fellow of the Association of Art Museums Curators International Foundation Engagement Program. In summer 2017, she was a fellow at Clark Art Institute as part of the Summer Collaborative Working Group, developing a comparative research on narrative models of national art across the Americas.
