Museum Culture in Brazil: Mário Pedrosa and the 6th São Paulo Biennial

Mário Pedrosa e a VI Bienal de São Paulo

Abstract

From October 1 to December 31, 1961, the 6th edition of the São Paulo International Biennial took place in the current Ciccillo Matarazzo pavilion. It had the participation of 681 artists from 50 countries, totaling 4,990 works and reaching 300,000 visitors. It is known for its grandiosity and boldness in celebrating the 10th anniversary of the exhibition, however, criticisms are divided between defining this grandeur as “antiquarian or epiphanic”, as Glaucia Villas Bôas (2022) observes. The edition project proposed a critical look at the western, colonialist and imperialist narrative of art history. By anticipating the post-colonialist debate during the sixth edition - which only came to reverberate in the late 1980s - Mário Pedrosa denounced the lacking in Brazilian museological institutions: evoking identification with their public. The complaint was not heard with so much echo at the time, but it can show us a milestone in the process of building a new culture of museums in Brazil, which in fact belongs to all.