Ibirapuera Cultural Union

The Ibirapuera Cultural Union project is a continuation of research, initiated in 2016, in the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo’s Wanda Svevo Archive. A document dated 1958 found in the archive heralded an “Ibirapuera Cultural Union” that was to gather different institutions located in Ibirapuera Park at that time so that they could act autonomously in administrative matters concerning the municipal government. Actual articulation failed to materialize but the institutions retain their aspirations for autonomous initiatives in relation to the municipal administration even today. 

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Neighbours noted that the Fundação Bienal had historically shown little or no commitment to the dynamic of conserving the park. At the 28th Bienal de São Paulo, the Ibirapuera Cultural Union project symbolically performed the enunciation of the original “Union.” By researching and discussing the past and present of the complex institutional fabric that sustains the park and is crucial for its existence as we know it, the infrastructure of park-keeping measures that remain invisible to the public was revealed. 

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The constitution of the “Union” was done by configuring a space of debate, a program of lectures or talks delivered by collaborators from different fields of knowledge, all acting in or around Ibirapuera, while organizing public conferences or events and formulating an editorial project. The third issue of museumuseu’s journal carried news clippings and documents from different periods in the history of the park and collections held by its institutions.

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[2008] Lecture series "União Ibirapuera" [program with 26 guests, from 26/10 to 06/12/2008]; museumuseu Newsletter, n. 3, 2008; Editorial Project museumuseu [26 booklets, laser print on paper and cover]; Conference museumuseu [within the event “História como matéria flexível,” org. Ana Paula Cohen].