Giuseppe Antonelli, Giacomo Micheletti, Anna Stella Poli (a cura di)
Verso il museo multimediale della lingua italiana
DOI: 10.1401/9788815410283/c8

Marília Bonas Choices and challenges in (re)constructing the Museum of Portuguese Language

Notizie Autori
Marília Bonas si è specializzata in Museologia presso la Universidade de São Paulo e ha conseguito un master in Museologia sociale presso la Universidade Lusófona di Lisbona. Ha diretto il Museu do Café di Santos e il Museu da Imigração di São Paulo. Attualmente è direttrice tecnica del Museu da Língua Portuguesa.
Abstract
The Museum of Portuguese Language was open in first place in 2006. In nine years of existence we have had around four million visitors, and it has been described as one of the four best museums in Latin America. We focused so much on the educational issue. Our choice was about a narrative celebration of Portuguese language, presenting it without any conflict about the presence of this language in the Brazilian territory. Our idea is to present, show and teach to the public a very big challenge: that Portuguese language was not something spontaneous and «natural» during the history and the development of Brazil, but something that was imposed by colonialism. In this exhibition, we also have an area which focuses on variations, accents and differences of the Brazilian Portuguese. It’s important to understand what is Brazil: Brazil is an enormous country, with many differences, a varied country, with many identities, and we are now living a very bad economic and sanitary crisis. It’s a very complicated moment, so I think that the museum should understand how to react and how to connect with the society and its problems.
I am not a researcher: I am a museologist and I focus my studies on social museology, so I will talk about the reopening of the Estação da Luz Museum of Portuguese Language [1]
(on July 31st of 2021) from a museological perspective.
The Museum of Portuguese Language was open in first place in 2006. In nine years of existence we have had around four million visitors, and it has been described as one of the four best museums in Latin America. We focused so much on the educational issue.
In 2015 a fire completely destroyed the museum, located in Estação da Luz (one of the most important train stations in São Paulo), which has been rebuilt in the last years.
Now the museum is completely ready to be open again (we couldn’t do that recently because of the pandemic situation, which is very bad in Brazil): the reopening was conceived and organized by different groups of specialists: linguists, artists, historians, researchers, in order to give an idea and an understanding of Portuguese language.
We have many spaces and rooms (for example the Room of Languages, which describes how the languages of the world influence and have consequences on Brazilian Portuguese). Obviously, we needed to do some choices (we are always talking about linguistic choices), which implies very often losses: mainly when we talked about the representation of the language and how the Portuguese language was born, as well as its various and different connections with other languages.
Our choice was about a narrative celebration of Portuguese language, presenting it without any conflict about {p. 82}the presence of this language in the Brazilian territory. Our idea is to present, show and teach to the public a very big challenge: that Portuguese language was not something spontaneous and «natural» during the history and the development of Brazil, but something that was imposed by colonialism.
In this celebrative perspective, we chose to celebrate the Brazilian Portuguese, which is not the European Portuguese anymore, but a variation of the language spoken in Portugal.
I am now presenting a critical point of view about this narrative perspective, especially on how Portuguese language developed in a linear way. In fact, to talk about language and identity in such a way is quite difficult, because they actually are not so «linear», and when we choose to represent them in a linear way, we are also building our narrative in a linear way.
We also have many games to play in order to present and talk about how other languages in the world had some kind of influence in the Portuguese language.
In this (let’s say) new exhibition, that is old but also new, because it is a new opening, we have many new areas, many new rooms: for example, rooms about countries in the world which actually speak Portuguese, in Africa, in China, in the area of Macao; we also present a quite complicated issue, the concept of lusofonia, which means the identity in the Portuguese language and Portuguese speaking community, in order to understand what this concept is today.
In this exhibition, we also have an area which focuses on variations, accents and differences of the Brazilian Portuguese. The biggest experience in our museum it’s an experience of immersion in a room where there is a video that shows how a language can help the human beings and illustrates the possibilities that a language gives to human beings. There is also a projection of music and sounds and pieces of Portuguese literature.
We have really big challenges in this reopening, but I think that any kind of museum which is reopening now is kind of old, after two big issues that happened in the world: I mean Black Lives Matter and the pandemic situation, {p. 83}of course. We also have challenges, from a museological point of view, concerning the link and the connection between the museum and the heritage of Portuguese. The first one is to guarantee and focus on multiple voices, so how to build a long-term institution which can guarantee the representation of multiple voices. The second is quite a particular one, because the museum was not born from an academic initiative, an academic idea, so we are now focusing about the role of Portuguese, which is a really dynamic language, in order to understand from which point of view, from which side the museum present and develop the role of Portuguese language. Also, another task of the museum is to fight against the prejudices, linguistic ones, in an international and local perspective, in order to fight against xenophobia, not only in which way talking about these problems, but also concretely how to act and how to solve this problem and understanding which kind of partners could help fighting these issues.
Then, another important, not theoretical, but very concrete and objective issue is racism: even though Brazil is a country in which more than a half of the population is composed by black people, it’s a very racist country.
And of course the problem of racism is reflected and translated even in the Portuguese language and in the social structure, which is a result of colonialism. So the focus is how the museum can help and act in order to fight against racism. The concept of racism is connected to colonialism and colonization and, also, decolonization: focusing about differences and identities, which are plural, a challenge developing in time, not only from a museological but also from a linguistic point of view.
Then, I think it’s important to understand what is Brazil: Brazil is an enormous country, with many differences, a varied country, with many identities, and we are now living a very bad economic and sanitary crisis. It is also the object of financial investment of millions of dollars and so of course we have a big responsibility to act from an educational and also a social point of view, because we have a big and strong impact on society, on diversification of society.{p. 84}
We need to try to fight against this kind of problems, I know that there is the opportunity to discuss these themes, and the museum is a big opportunity of discussion, not only from an academic but also from a practical point of view. It’s a very complicated moment, so I think that the museum should understand how to react and how to connect with the society and its problems.
Note