Abstract
The creation of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was inspired by the 18th century French model of the Louvre, based on the original project by architects Leveiul and Visconti carried out by Adolfo Morales de Los Rios between 1906 and 1908. As an architect and anthropologist at the National Museum of Fine Arts, I share a self-reflexive premise by Clifford Geertz (1973, p. 15-20) about the fact that academic communities themselves must be seen as exotic, in an effort to produce an ethnography of modern thought related to imagetic investigation. My analysis focuses on the role played by political and economic elites in the Brazilian cultural formation process, taking into account the different factions of the ruling class, their disputes and alliances (BOURDIEU, 1979). The Imperial Academy of Fine Arts collection reiterates that Brazilian society was seen as a battlefield operating on the basis of force and meaning. Wars, naval and land battles, discoveries of new lands, fights against infidel Arabs and other enemies of the Lusitanian nation are represented in the paintings brought to Brazil by D. João VI, revealing the intertwined presence of the cross and the sword in Portuguese culture of the 19th century. The iconic painting “First Mass in Brazil” (1860) by Victor Meirelles was appropriated by Emperor D. Pedro II in his nationalist propaganda held at the Universal Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 as a symbol of the homeland iconologically, identified with the national culture, on a popular level.
Presenters
Dinah Tereza Papi de GuimaraensAssociate Professor, Architecture, University Federal Fluminense-UFF, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
ECLECTIC MUSEUMS-NATIONALISM-IMAGETIC ETHNOGRAPHY
