Monuments under scrutiny: reframing Brazil’s national history through the reopening of the Museu do Ipiranga

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This article examines the Ipiranga Museum (São Paulo, Brazil) as a contested site of national memory, tracing its historiographical trajectory from the racialist and positivist framework of its early years to the consolidation, under the long directorship of Affonso de Taunay (1917–1945), of a narrative centred on Paulista nationalism and the mythologisation of the bandeirantes. Following its 2022 reopening for the Bicentenary of Independence, the ‘New’ Ipiranga Museum has become a space where this hegemonic discourse coexists uneasily with artistic interventions that confront the museum’s historical erasures of Black and Indigenous bodies and narratives. Drawing on interviews and participant observation, the article argues that these interventions, while powerful, have not been sufficient to dismantle the pillars of Paulista nationalism embedded in the museum’s narrative. The Ipiranga Museum thus reveals itself as plural and internally disputed, offering a productive case for reflecting on the limits and possibilities of incorporating dissenting voices into national museums’ curatorial practice.