Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

This paper analyses the exhibition “Álbum de Família” showed at the Museu do Fado in Lisbon in 2015. It displayed a selection of portraits of fado practitioners by Aurelio Vasques. It came with a catalogue containing the entire collection of photographs taken by the artist during the preparation of the exhibition. This work is an interesting example of innovative configurations created to display and promote a popular urban song like fado, in the scope of the principles of the Convention for the Safeguarding of ICH and the inclusive, collaborative, and people-centred turn of museums dedicated to living heritage. The exhibition drew on the domestic, vernacular tradition of family albums, where a visual account of a related group is given in a printed book, but also played with the aristocratic tradition of painted portraits of the successors of an important family, conveying prestige and promoting descent. It represented the fado community as an extended “family,” exhibited on the walls of the museum, presented as “their” house. I analyse how this exhibition conveyed symbolic meanings regarding the ideas of community, domesticity, fado as “ordinary heritage,” and the museum as an inclusive space centred on people rather than objects. I observe how it created a sense of belonging and familiarity among fado actors and visitors, but as a counterpart, feelings of exclusion among those not selected to be part of the “family.” Thus, the tensions and social issues at stake in experimental, inclusive displays of ICH are examined.