Follow the restoration of the Ipiranga Museum without leaving your home
A series of videos shows details of the renovation and expansion of the Ipiranga Museum, as well as the work with part of the collection that cannot leave the historic building
Image by Webysther, available from Wikimedia under CC BY-SA 4.0 license
The Ipiranga Museum, an important Brazilian cultural heritage, is under renovation and follows a project with current standards of infrastructure, accessibility, sustainability and safety, with special equipment for fire prevention, including health protocols to prevent the contagion of workers by new coronavirus. A large part of the collection of 450,000 items was removed from the building and transported to buildings adapted to receive them, but some works, due to their dimensions, could not leave the historic building.
One such case is a painting by Pedro Américo, the painting Independence or death, which is being restored on site while renovations are taking place. The reopening is scheduled for September 2022, to celebrate the bicentennial of the Independence of Brazil.
To present the advances in the renovation of the monument-building and show the care and details that a work of this size requires, the Museum has prepared a series of videos called “Diário da Obra”. In the first episode, the works to protect the building and the works of art that will continue in the Museum during the renovation are the highlights, as well as the dismantling of the main staircase and the removal of the asphalt in front of the building, which will be replaced by a Portuguese mosaic. In the second episode, the care that is being taken during the pandemic and the stages of restoration of the façade are shown. Click on the videos below to check it out.
Investment in cultural heritage
Inaugurated on September 7, 1895 and integrated with USP in 1963, the Ipiranga Museum has been closed for public visitation since 2013, due to the need for restoration and modernization works. The restoration and modernization of the historic building began after the commemorations of September 7, 2019. Since the assembly of a construction site, the protection of artistic assets integrated into the construction, the archaeological monitoring, everything goes through prospecting and testing. For example, mortar and paints need to have special characteristics, similar to those used in the 19th century, when the monument building was built.
The work is sponsored through the Culture Incentive Law and should cost around R$ 139.5 million, funded by companies: Banco Safra, Bradesco, Caterpillar, Comgás, Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN), EDP, EMS, Honda, Itaú, Vale, Basic Sanitation Company of the State of São Paulo (Sabesp) and Pinheiro Neto Advogados, in addition to the partnership of Fundação Banco do Brasil and Caixa.
Planning for future exhibitions is already underway and includes addressing historical issues linked to the formation of the Brazilian nation, the dispute for territories, the urban landscape and the domestic and work environments, with items from the collection itself and also borrowed from other collections .
