Museums: places for experiments and dreams

Maria Ignez Mantovani Franco*

POR | ESP

The celebration of the 10^th Encontro Paulista de Museus is a very important conquer to Sao Paulo’s museology, which encourages and inspires everyone in the unstoppable search for our museums’ relevance and sustainability.

Since the creation of Sao Paulo State’s Museum System (1986), currently named SISEM, the museums articulate themselves in collaborative manners in their regions and, together, find synergies capable of making their actions stronger.

In this year, in which the International Museum Day is dedicated to the motif “Hyperconnected Museums: new approaches, new audiences”, we must turn ourselves to comprehending the interactions, the approximations, the collaborations and the dialogues between museums in connection with their diverse audiences

The media basis that envelopes our millennium determines a new time pace, a new place for experiments, inspirations and inputs, with the museums having the capacity to articulate between them, their nets and their multiple expectancies and fulfillment realms.

Therefore, it is about managing the relationships in real time, of articulating new ways of approach, of listening, of knowledge management between our audiences, of discovering new ways of managing and improving our museums.

In the age of fake news, museums are able to transform themselves in essences, in an oasis for experiences, in places of memory, in webs capable of interlacing different narratives, enfolding different social characters. Places never appeased, incapable of amalgamating or aligning themselves; museums are restless territories, simultaneously turned towards yesterday, and towards now, capable of asking and continuously interpreting their collections. Museums are places for dreams, affection, memories and for perceiving the future – dubious, uncertain, but perhaps, magical!

Everyone is invited to contemplate and dream during the 10^th Encontro Paulista de Museus!

Maria Ignez Mantovani Franco is doctorated in Museology from the Lusophone University (Universidade Lusófona) in Portugal, is also the director of EXPOMUS. She was ICOM Brasil’s President from 2012 to 2018. She also integrated the Sao Paulo State’s Secretary of Culture at the moment of SISEM-SP’s creation (1986).

Versão em inglês feita por Carol Romão – professora de inglês, revisora e tradutora. Contato: carolinasromao@gmail.com