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 the capital and largest city of the state of Pará in the north of B ...

, 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 st ...

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

Antônio Lemos Palace The Palácio Antônio Lemos (originally called "Palacete Azul", or "Casa no Largo do Palácio"), also called the Belém Art Museum, is a public building, palace, museum, and the city hall of Belém, built in 1860 by José da Gama Abreu, in the c ...

, a

neoclassical style Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassici ...

building erected in the second half of the 19th century 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 paintings, sculptures, drawings,

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design on 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 ar ...

s, photographs, 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 Univ ...

(furniture and

porcelain Porcelain (), also called china, is a ceramic material made by heating Industrial mineral, raw materials, generally including kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The greater strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to oth ...

), from Brazil and abroad, produced between the 18th 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.

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 SAO or Sao may refer to: Places * Sao civilisation, in Middle Africa from 6th century BC to 16th century AD * Sao, a town in Boussé Department, Burkina Faso * Serb Autonomous Regions (''Srpska autonomna oblast'', SAO), during the breakup of Y ...

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 an advantage or entitlement that benefits individuals belonging to certain groups, often to the detriment of others. Privileged groups can be advantaged based on social class, wealth, education, caste, age, height, skin colo ...

children from Beco do Carmo.

Facilities

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. 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, borough cou ...

, 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 Bourb ...

. 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 cycle or boom (, ; , ) was an important part of the socioeconomic history of Brazil and Amazonian regions of neighboring countries, being related to the commercialization of rubber and the genocide of indigenous peoples. Cente ...

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

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 Aca ...

, 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, academicism, or academism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. This method extended its influence throughout the Western world over several centuries, from its origins i ...

and early twentieth-century proto-

modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

, authors such as Theodoro Braga and

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

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. * * 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