Museu Aberto de Arte Urbana (MAAU) de São Paulo: da criação a uma proposta de documentação

Abstract

Over many years, since the 1970s, street art has been increasingly gaining space in the landscape of Brazilian cities, and in October 2011, the first space titled as a museum dedicated to this artistic typology was created in the capital of São Paulo, the Museu Aberto de Arte Urbana (MAAU). The institution emerged from the hands of the artists themselves as a means of promoting and popularizing street art when they were prevented from painting on the pillars of the elevated section of São Paulo subway's Line 1 - Blue. This research is dedicated to tracing a history of the museum's creation, in order to understand its significance within society and contribute to a way of preserving its history and collection through the proposal of a documentation model. In order to better understand the dynamics of street art, this work develops from a general historical overview of this artistic expression, with a focus on the Brazilian context, presenting the specifics of the creation, management, and preservation of MAAU as a case study. In addition to the theoretical framework belonging to the fields of preservation and documentation, there are also testimonies from the artists involved in the creation of the Museum and the results of research from documentary sources and the community. This provides a comprehensive overview of the importance of urban art and MAAU in contemporary society. These findings guided the development of a documentation protocol proposal, designed to be accessible in the short, medium, and long term, aimed at facilitating the management of the Museum's collection records for research and preservation purposes.