Management of the architect Eduardo Kneese De Mello’s artistic heritage: report on the organizational treatment of the iconographic collection

Abstract

Conducted in 2015, this research focuses on the report of the process of organization and primary cataloguing of the iconographical section of architect Eduardo Kneese de Mello’s (1906-1994) collection, currently integrated into the library of the University Center of Fine Arts of São Paulo. The collection, produced by the architect throughout his life, regained strength in 2006, as Professor Ademir Pereira dos Santos found in his work a source of research, stimulating different ways of handling it. After the elucidation on the institutional trajectory of this material, a production guided by concerns that are different from those of previous researches, objectified by the coexisting relations between the most significant part of the collection – the slides – and the other documentary species that make it up, is shown here. Following the comprehension of the scopes that succeeded the vast constituent material of the collection, the methodology applied in the treatment, diagnosis and structuring of the catalogue will be shown, as well as its importance as informational basis, through which a visual and quantitative outlook was built with the support and management of descriptive charts, percental graphics of different analyses and the elaboration of maps with illustrated scripts that provided the geographical accuracy of his knowledge and historical testimonies. The speculation of the existent layers enabled the beginning of the confirmation of the published information about the architect and a further complementation of his biography, with the complete knowledge about his travels. The panoramic characterization of the collection's content, unknown up until that point, was considered as the main objective, evidencing the problems to be faced in the future, as well as the potentialities and actions deemed as urgent and primordial to its survival.