Lina Bo Bardi’s glass and concrete gem in São Paulo to be restored to original condition

After being bailed out by Banco Itaú last year, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo is ready to return to its former glory in October

By José da Silva. Web only
Published online: 05 March 2015

Bo Bardi’s “glass easels”, which allowed the museum’s collection to seemingly float in its light-filled second floor gallery, are coming back. Photo: Lucas Bianchi

Lina Bo Bardi’s dramatic, open-plan galleries at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) will be restored to their former glory later this year. The museum’s new artistic director Adriano Pedrosa is leading the renovation, which will bring back many of the Modernist building’s original features, with work due to be completed in October.

One of the key aspects of the project is the return of Bo Bardi’s “glass easels”. Made of rectangular sheets of glass anchored in bare concrete bases, the easels allowed the museum’s collection to seemingly float in its light-filled second floor gallery. They were removed in the 1990s as part of one of many ad-hoc “temporary” alterations that are now being reversed. 

The “MASP In Process” project, already underway, aims to rediscover the museum’s architecture and its collection. It follows a major administrative overhaul and change of director last year, which were a condition of Banco Itaú’s bail-out of the struggling museum—including the sponsorship of the current programme—after its public grant was cut due to accounting irregularities. 

Bo Bardi’s design for MASP, which opened in 1968 with a ceremony attended by Queen Elizabeth II, will also be included in MoMA’s forthcoming exhibition “Latin America in Construction” (29 March-19 July). The Italian architect’s concrete and glass building is considered by Pedrosa to be “the most unique and precious item” in the museum’s collection. 

Bank saves Brazil’s biggest museum

Debt-ridden São Paulo institution forced to make major changes at the top

By Silas Martí. Focus, Issue 260, September 2014
Published online: 01 September 2014

In the red: Masp has asked for help to overcome its $24m debt

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Masp), Brazil’s biggest museum, which is facing unprecedented levels of debt, has announced a huge overhaul of its administration. The institution will change directors, more than double the number of trustees on its board and allow public officials to help steer it out of the deepest crisis in its 67-year history.

Since January 2013, the museum has been denied government grants—one of its biggest sources of funding—after alleged irregularities in its accounting. The museum now has total debts of around $24m and has delayed payments to curators and even to its security staff. To avoid closing its doors, Masp has asked for the help of Itaú bank, one of Brazil’s biggest cultural supporters.

The financial institution has agreed to help rescue the museum, but has demanded changes in its top administrative positions, calling on Heitor Martins, the former president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, to lead the overhaul. Martins was responsible for putting the biennial back on its feet between 2009 and 2013, after years of irresponsible spending and corruption almost sank the event.

Masp is a private organisation owned by a not-for-profit association, and despite traditionally receiving funding from three governmental departments, it has not allowed state agencies to be involved in the management of the institution. A private museum that operates in a public building (a glass structure designed by Lina Bo Bardi that hovers over Paulista Avenue, the main thoroughfare in downtown São Paulo), it has been controlled by the same group of the city’s elite for the past 20 years.

For decades, analysts have criticised the museum’s old-fashioned administration, and financial and administrative problems are nothing new. In 2006, Masp had its power and telephone service cut off after not paying the bills, and thieves invaded the museum in 2007, stealing works that were later recovered—a painting by Picasso among them. 

All this is set to change as Masp adopts a public-private model of administration, with public officials including São Paulo’s state secretary of culture preparing to start work on its board of trustees. This model has become a mainstay in Brazilian museums. Over the past 16 years, institutions such as the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and the recently opened Museu de Arte do Rio have achieved success by moving away from being wholly government-run and by adopting more flexible models whereby they receive a mixture of public and private funding. Changes of this magnitude are new to Masp, but drastic action is required.

The writer is the staff visual arts writer for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo