Re-presentation and documentation of installation art in three Brazilian museums

Abstract

The present paper aimed to understand how three different Brazilian museums, concerned with the collection of contemporary art, manage the documentation and re-exhibition of installations art contained in the collections. To this end, we chose to initially delineate what is understood as an artistic “installation” within the museological dynamics and to problematize the question of how art historians and professionals dedicated to the management of museum collections are facing a particular challenge: the reinstallation of the premises and necessary to instruct it. Analyzes of documents, consultations with managers, artists and works guided our methodology. The research found the dependence of museums on documentation coming from artists, the heterogeneity of this documentation and the absence of documents necessary for representation of the works.