Editors:
• Paulo Cesar Garcez Marins, University of São Paulo (USP)
• Mônica Raisa Schpun (Mondes américains/CRBC – EHESS)

Marking the bicentenary of Brazil’s independence and related celebrations, the present dossier, to be published in 2022, highlights the role museological institutions have played in configuring memorial practices underpinning the narratives of Brazilian society over the past 200 years. Rarefied spaces throughout the 19^th century, museums blossomed with the dawn of the Republic, when they began collecting or receiving various forms of support with the goal of documenting the national territory, demographic formation, representations of society, artistic practices, and relations to nature. Authors such as Ana Claudia Fonseca Brefe, Regina Abreu, and Myrian Sepulveda dos Santos have noted the extent to which national narratives, within the arena of historical museums, are marked by tensions arising from regional disputes, private memorial intentions, or appeasement practices that simultaneously built Brazilian history and celebration of the State that created it. The political hypertrophy of public museums in Brazil, and their frequent homogenizing character, makes such institutions especially relevant in questioning heritage practices marked by the hierarchy of the right to memory, in which a majority of social subjects was excluded from having their existence preserved and recognized. This dossier will not only touch on institutional trajectories, but also the contemporary strategies of reviewing and overcoming exclusionary practices that allow for renewed perspectives on social experience and a discussion of Brazilian contrasts, both historical and in the present. Articles focused on these axes will be accepted based on their engagement with the curatorial practices of public and private museums, the examination of the potential for renewal of collections acquisition policies, the study of the formation of collections or experiences or expository programs in which markers such as gender, class, race, ethnicity, among others, are factors of review, and the problematization of Brazilian memorial narratives.

Deadline for submission of articles: June 31, 2021
Contact: bresils-revue@ehess.fr

Auteur inconnu, "A baiana", huile sur toile, s.d. Collection du Musée Paulista de l'Université de São Paulo. Reproduction : Isabella Matheus.