Memória e história do trabalho e trabalhadores no circuito expositivo de longa duração do Museu Histórico Nacional

Abstract

I In the 21st century, transformations in the Brazilian work landscape, driven by neoliberalism, have led to situations of precariousness and rights flexibility for workers, stemming from labor law flexibilization. Considering the centrality of work in social formation for understanding national history, this research investigated the social representations of different meanings of work and workers in the long-term circuit of the National Historical Museum. Documentary analysis involved reading minutes and management reports from 1995 to 2020 provided by the Institutional Archives Core of the National Historical Museum. These documents revealed that the curatorial team of the 2000s created an exhibition showcase with work-related objects and uniforms in the "Citizenship under Construction" module from 1889 to the present, within the framework of social rights. Thirteen years later, an inconclusive reevaluation program, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, renamed the exhibition module to "Citizenship 1889 to the Present" and made specific changes to the showcase, maintaining an approach as a metonymy of professions. For the exhibition's expography analysis, the content analysis method was employed, ranging from accessing catalog cards in the Technical Reserve to the Tainacan digital platform, comparative studies of photographs, analysis of typography in exhibition modules, and bibliographies produced by the National Historical Museum team members. Through this methodology, a museological proposal was evident, simplifying the beginning of free labor in Brazil with the arrival of European immigrant workers, silencing the existence of a mass of free workers on the margins of the slave system in the Colony and the Empire. In the end, it became clear that the legacy left by the political organization advocating for the Brazilian working class, which in the 20th century served an educational function in forming class consciousness, is muted in the "Citizenship 1889 to the Present" module. In this gap, critical museology becomes a significant methodological option, with the potential to provoke reflections beyond a fatalistic history where enslaved workers endured physical torture and wage laborers faced existential precarity. Consequently, we conclude that the mere presence of representative objects from a social class or silenced theme is insufficient for museum communication to fulfill its social function. To enhance the perception and reception of objects, it is necessary to stimulate reflection on the choices and human actions that influenced the creation and use of these objects, considering the social forces from which they emerged. The study also identified that expographic modifications in the long-term circuit are directly related to the profiles of the National Historical Museum's management/directorships. Even with the involvement of museum staff or external consultants in the curation, what becomes evident in the expographies are the marks of what was deemed important to be left as a legacy of the management, as well as what was questioned regarding the previous administration. In this perspective, museum documentation was essential for this research, not only in preserving the memory of objects but also in recording the activities of museum professionals. While these activities are part of their routine job responsibilities, for external researchers, they represent methodological processes reflecting cultural policies, curatorial choices, formats, and underlying intentions.