The Museum Forum: An Introduction to Walter Zanini's “New Direction for the Museum of Contemporary Art”

Abstract This article examines the curatorial practice that Walter Zanini (Brazil, 1925–2013) applied at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea at Universidade de São Paulo (MAC USP), which he directed from its foundation in 1963 until 1978 and which has stood ever since as Brazil's leading contemporary art museum. I propose that the high impact of Zanini's curatorial work, based on the idea of “museum as forum,” can be traced through Zanini's one-page article “New Direction for the Museum of Contemporary Art,” originally published in Portuguese in December 1974. Zanini's exposure to the idea of the “museum as forum vs. the museum as temple” can, in turn, be traced to his participation in the 1969 International Council to Museums (ICOM) symposium in Brussels. In response, I situate Zanini's curatorial practice within international debates conducted by his contemporaries in the contexts of both post–1968 Paris and Brazil's military dictatorship (1964–1985). Ultimately, my article argues that Zanini's implementation of the concept of the “museum as forum” at MAC USP set the guidelines that continue to determine the display of contemporary art in Brazil and anticipated recent curatorial approaches to contemporary art in a global context that center dialogical exchanges.