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Correio newspaper | Salvador Museum will receive around 750 works by black artists repatriated from the USA

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MUNCAB

Museum of Salvador will receive around 750 works by black artists repatriated from the USA

Collectors who acquired the pieces legally since 1992 will donate them to the National Museum of Afro-Brazilian Culture (Muncab)

  • Photo by the author Estadão

Published on October 28, 2024 at 9:55 pm

‘Procession of the Brotherhood of the Good Death’ by Lena da Bahia Credit: Con-vida

A collection of 727 works of Afro-Brazilian art that was in the United States is returning to the country. The works, made by predominantly black artists from Bahia, Pernambuco and Ceará, were acquired legally by two American collectors who decided to donate them to the National Museum of Afro-Brazilian Culture (Muncab), located in Salvador (BA).

It is the largest repatriation of Afro-Brazilian art ever carried out in the country, according to experts at the museum, dedicated to the preservation, documentation, dissemination and appreciation of cultures of African origin.

The repatriation will take place in the second half of 2025 and includes iron and wood sculptures, paintings, engravings and religious and folkloric objects. They are classified as “popular art” because they were created by self-taught artists, who did not attend traditional art schools.

Among them is the painting Procession of the Brotherhood of the Good Death, by the artist Lena da Bahia (1941-2015), an Afro-Catholic procession carried out for the first time in 1820 by freed African women who asked for protection from Our Lady.

The collection represents an important addition to the museum, which reopened in November last year. “The repatriation of the collection strengthens the debate about the contributions of the black population to Brazilian visual arts, at the same time that it counteracts the racial hierarchy that sometimes classifies Afro collections as popular and primitive”, says Jamile Coelho, director of administrative of Muncab.

“The return of this collection coincides with an epistemological turn that has occurred in Brazilian public universities, driven by the black presence in the student and teaching bodies of these institutions, which was driven by affirmative action policies”, explains Kleber Amancio, assistant professor at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB) and visiting researcher at Harvard University.

The repatriated collection was assembled over three decades by collectors Marion Jackson, professor emerita of Art History at the University of Michigan, and Barbara Cervenka, artist and Dominican nun. “Artists, their families and their communities can see their work in a truly prestigious museum,” celebrates Jackson.

International debate on the return of cultural heritage

The repatriation of the works coincides with the growing international debate on the return of cultural heritage acquired during the colonial period. This case, however, is different from other recent returns, such as the Tupinambá mantle by Denmark. The pieces of Brazilian art were acquired legally. The repatriation involves the Con/vida Institute, an organization created by the donors, the Ibirapitanga Institute, the Ministry of Culture, Itamaraty and the United States Embassy, ​​according to Cintia Maria, general director of Muncab.

“This process is opening doors for Muncab to be recognized as a focal point in the recovery of Afro-Brazilian collections and we hope that new opportunities will emerge from this experience”, he states.

The processes of artistic repatriation become more recurrent after the wave of protests by the political movement Black Lives Matter, in the United States, intensified by the death of the African-American George Floyd, in 2020. The demonstrations were joined by a large part of the population of the most different countries

To increase the presence of black artists in art schools, museums and exhibitions, Muncab has promoted group exhibitions by black artists, workshops, courses and lectures. “Our boldest action is the creation of an endowment fund for black artists, which will allow them to produce, experiment and study without the need to combine other work”, says Cintia

Exhibition with 200 works of classic art by black artists

Parallel to the donation, Muncab presents the mega-exhibition Raízes: Beginning, Middle and Beginning with more than 200 works from classical to contemporary art signed by 80 black artists. The exhibition meets the demand for the consumption of black aesthetics in contemporary arts. Between November 2023, when it reopened, and March this year, Muncab received around 150 thousand, with temporary exhibitions such as “Um defeito de cor”, now in São Paulo.

The exhibition’s path, divided into the five thematic axes “Origins”, “Sacred”, “Streets”, “Afrofuturism” and “Bembé do Mercado”, transcends the Western logic of irreversible time with a beginning, middle and end. Instead, the artistic narrative recognizes ancestry as fundamental to the understanding and construction of the present and the future.

SERVICE: Exhibition ‘Roots: Beginning, Middle and Beginning’

Location: National Museum of Afro-Brazilian Culture (Muncab)

Address: Rua das Vassouras, 25, Historic Center of Salvador, Bahia

Period: Until March 9, 2025

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, from 10am to 5pm (access until 4:30pm)

Tickets: R$ 20.00 (full) and R$ 10.00 (half)

Free: Wednesdays and Sundays

More information: (71) 3017-6722 and Museuafrobrasileiro.com.br

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Michelle Williams

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