Museum and memories in the exhibition Pretagonisms in the MNBA collection: towards a potential history?

Abstract

Is it possible to conceive of exhibitions featuring historical artworks that don't tell "a single story"? Can reparative practices help ensure more plural museum narratives and minimize the impact of imperial or colonial legacies? It is with this in mind that we aim to analyze the exhibition "Pretagonismos no Acervo do Museu Nacional de Belas Artes" (Black Protagonism in the National Museum of Fine Arts Collection), held at Espaço BNDES (2024-2025). We believe this exhibition allows us to think from the perspective of a "potential history," as proposed by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay. A potential history is neither a history of possibilities (what if?) nor a history solely of the oppressed. Instead, it's a history that can unearth what lives in the present, amidst the rubble of the disaster of colonization and slavery. In this way, imperial history is reduced to just one of the possible stories to be told, not the only one. We conducted three visits to the exhibition, in addition to participating in a debate with the curators and the director of the MNBA. Photographs, videos, and field diary notes form part of our analytical corpus, as does the exhibition catalog. Through the act of re-titling artworks, effacing, and highlighting portraits of Black individuals—especially the works in the "Nas Brechas da Representação" (In the Gaps of Representation) section—the curators manage to reclaim the Black potency that was already present in the past as an alternative pathway, yet persisted as an underground memory.