The Belém Museum of Art (MABE) is a public municipal museum located in the city of

Belém Belém (; Portuguese for Bethlehem; initially called Nossa Senhora de Belém do Grão-Pará, in English Our Lady of Bethlehem of Great Pará) often called Belém of Pará, is a Brazilian city, capital and largest city of the state of Pará in t ...

, capital of the state of

Pará Pará is a Federative units of Brazil, state of Brazil, located in northern Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins (state), Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas (Brazilian state) ...

, Brazil. Founded in 1991, it is subordinated to the Cultural Foundation of the Municipality of Belém (FUMBEL). Its headquarters is the Antônio Lemos Palace, a

neoclassical style Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassicism, Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The pr ...

building erected in the second half of the

19th century The 19th (nineteenth) century began on 1 January 1801 ( MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 ( MCM). The 19th century was the ninth century of the 2nd millennium. The 19th century was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolis ...

to be the headquarters of the Municipal Government, listed as heritage by the public authorities at the federal, state, and municipal levels. The collection, of over 1,500 artworks, is composed of

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

drawing Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, ...

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ...

photograph A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now create ...

s, and examples of

applied arts The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing."Applied art" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Art''. Online edition. Oxford Univers ...

(

furniture Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Fu ...

and

porcelain Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises mainl ...

), from Brazil and abroad, produced between the

18th 18 (eighteen) is the natural number following 17 and preceding 19. In mathematics * Eighteen is a composite number, its divisors being 1, 2, 3, 6 and 9. Three of these divisors (3, 6 and 9) add up to 18, hence 18 is a semiperfect number. ...

and 20th centuries. It has a library specialized in visual arts (approximately one thousand volumes), an auditorium, three permanent exhibition rooms, and two rooms for temporary exhibitions. The MABE maintains two other exhibition spaces in the city, the Municipal Art Gallery and the Museum of Popular Art, the latter located in the district of

Icoaraci Icoaraci is one of the eight districts in which the municipality of Belém, capital of the state of Pará, in Brazil, is divided. It is located approximately 20 km from the center of the state capital and has around 200,000 inhabitants, accord ...

History

From the 1970s decade on, thanks to the expansion of modern means of communication and the breaking of physical isolation from other regions of the Brazilian territory through the construction of the Belém-Brasília highway, the city of Belém began to have greater access to the flow of information and the promotion of events, integrating itself more fully into the Brazilian art scene. Thus, artists from Pará had easier access to events that were previously restricted, especially in the Rio-São Paulo axis, and became part, for example, of the exhibitions promoted by the São Paulo Art Biennial Foundation and the National Salons of Fine Arts organized by the National Arts Foundation (''Fundação Nacional de Artes'' - Funarte). This trend intensifies in the 1980s, marked by pro-redemocratization movements, responsible for bringing together a considerable part of the artistic and intellectual classes. Several cultural organizations arise, theatrical groups proliferate in the city, and in 1982 the Arte Pará Salon is created, which becomes an important milestone in the diffusion of local arts. It is in this context that the Belém Municipal Pinacoteca was created in 1983, with the function of cataloging, preserving, and disseminating the art collection belonging to the municipal government, composed of works acquired since the early 20th century, on the occasion of academic exhibitions held in the capital. In 1986, the Belém City Museum was created, again through the City Hall's initiative, from the collection of the Municipal Pinacoteca. Three years later, the Cultural Foundation of the Municipality of Belém (FUMBEL) was established, the agency responsible for the promotion, dissemination of art and also for the maintenance of the historical, artistic and cultural heritage of the city. The foundation then starts to manage the municipality's two museum spaces. In 1991, still as a result of this process of organization and consolidation of the municipality's cultural equipment network, the Belém Museum of Art is created during the administration of Manoel Augusto da Costa Rezende, as a department of FUMBEL. In 1994, after the renovation work in Antônio Lemos Palace, the City Hall's headquarters, the new museum was transferred to this building, where it is located until today. On the occasion of its reinauguration, its catalogue was expanded with collections from the Municipal Pinacoteca and the City Museum. The museum is responsible for managing two other museum spaces in the city of Belém: the Municipal Art Gallery and the Museum of Popular Art, located in the district of Icoaraci. The Belém Museum of Art aims to preserve, restore, expand, research and publicize its heritage and foster various forms of artistic manifestations, as well as provide services to the student community, mainly in the field of art-education. Besides the permanent exhibitions, the institution organizes and hosts temporary and itinerant exhibitions, maintains guided tours for groups of students from public and private schools, artistic awareness workshops, events complementary to the thematic exhibitions, and lectures for organized groups from civil society. Among the permanent projects, ''Pontearte'' stands out, created in 2008 in partnership with ''Cidade Velha Cidade Viva'' association (CiVViva), aiming to develop activities to enhance the cultural heritage and stimulate artistic production with

underprivileged Social privilege is a theory of special advantage or entitlement, which benefits one person, often to the detriment of others. Privileged groups can be advantaged based on education, social class, caste, age, height, weight, nationality, geogra ...

children from Beco do Carmo.

Facilities

José_Coelho_da_Gama_e_Abreu_-_Diário_Illustrado_(18Nov1875)

The Belém Museum of Art is housed in the Antônio Lemos Palace, which is also home to the municipal government's headquarters. The museum occupies seven exhibition rooms on the upper floor and two rooms on the first floor of the building, totaling 1,500

square meters The square metre ( international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or square meter (American spelling) is the unit of area in the International System of Units (SI) with symbol m2. It is the area of a square ...

. It is equipped with a restoration laboratory, technical reserve, auditorium, cinema room, and library. The Antônio Lemos Palace, also known as "''Palacete Azul''", was designed by José Coelho da Gama e Abreu and built in the second half of the 19th century to house the Municipal Stewardship, thus integrating a select group of 1800's Brazilian buildings that still maintain their original public functions. It is located in Cidade Velha neighborhood, the historic center of the capital of Pará, between Felipe Patroni and D. Pedro II squares. Its construction began in 1860 and was completed in 1885. It predominantly follows the late neoclassical style, also known in Brazil as "Empire style". In addition to the City Hall, it has already housed the Court of Appeals, the Board of Trade, the

municipal Council A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, rural counci ...

, and the

Chamber of Deputies The chamber of deputies is the lower house in many bicameral legislatures and the sole house in some unicameral legislatures. Description Historically, French Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament during the Bourbon R ...

. It was listed as heritage by the National Service of Historic and Artistic Heritage (now

IPHAN The National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute (, IPHAN) is a heritage register of the federal government of Brazil. It is responsible for the preservation of buildings, monuments, structures, objects and sites, as well as the register and ...

) in 1942 and, subsequently, by similar state and municipal agencies and institutes.

Collection

File:Antôno Parreiras - A Catedral de Belém, 1905.JPG, Antônio Parreiras. ''The Cathedral of Belém'', 1905. File:Antôno Parreiras - Calçada do Largo da Pólvora, 1905.JPG, Antônio Parreiras. ''Largo da Pólvora Sidewalk'', 1905. File:Antôno Parreiras - Praça da República, 1905.JPG, Antônio Parreiras. ''Republic Square'', 1905. File:Aurélio de Figueiredo - Corcovado, s.d..JPG, Aurélio de Figueiredo. ''Corcovado.'' File:Benedito Calixto - Recanto de Jardim I (1906).JPG, Benedito Calixto. ''Garden Retreat I'', 1906. File:Domenico De Angelis e Giovanni Capranesi - Últimos dias de Carlos Gomes, 1899.JPG, Domenico De Angelis and Giovanni Capranesi. ''Carlos Gomes Last Days'', 1899. File:Fernandes Machado - Arrebaldes de Nice, 1906.JPG, Fernandes Machado. ''Nice Surroundings'', 1906. The Belém Museum of Art has a collection of more than 1,500 works, including paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, photographs and decorative objects produced in Brazil and Europe between the 18th and 20th centuries. The segments referring to works produced in the context of the

rubber boom The Amazon rubber boom ( pt, Ciclo da borracha, ; es, Fiebre del caucho, , 1879 to 1912) was an important part of the economic and social history of Brazil and Amazonian regions of neighboring countries, being related to the extraction and comm ...

period and to Pará

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

, depicting scenes of Belém, its inhabitants, and the

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

region, are particularly rich. In the collection of paintings, a set of eleven canvases depicting urban landscapes of Belém executed by

Antônio Parreiras Antônio Diogo da Silva Parreiras (20 January 1860, Niterói – 17 October 1937, Niterói) was a Brazilian painter, designer and illustrator. Biography He was one of nine children and his father was a goldsmith. In 1882, he enrolled at the Ac ...

, one of the many Brazilian artists attracted by the prosperity of the capitals of the Northern region during the rubber cycle, stands out. Also in the context of nineteenth-century

academic art Academic art, or academicism or academism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie d ...

and early twentieth-century proto-

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

, authors such as Theodoro Braga and

Benedito Calixto Benedito Calixto de Jesus (14 October 1853 – 31 May 1927) was a Brazilian Painting, painter. His works usually depicted figures from Brazil and Brazilian culture, including a famous portrait of the ''bandeirante'' Domingos Jorge Velho in 1923, ...

stand out.

References

Bibliography

* Arraes, Rosa Maria Lourenço (2006). ''Paisagens de Belém: história, natureza e pintura na obra de Antônio Parreiras, 1895-1909'' (Thesis) (in Portuguese). Universidade Federal do Pará. * Lourenço, Maria Cecília França; Comissão de Patrimônio Cultural da USP (2000). ''Guia de Museus Brasileiros'' (in Portuguese). São Paulo, SP, Brasil: Edusp.

ISBN The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency. An ISBN is assigned to each separate edition and ...

85-314-0572-6. * Meira, Maria Angélica Almeida de (2008). ''A arte do fazer: o artista Ruy Meira e as artes plásticas no Pará dos anos 1940 a 1980'' (Thesis). Fundação Getúlio Vargas.

External links