Maria de Fátima Lambert¹, Paula Freire²

¹InED / ESE – Porto Polytechnic Institute, Portugal
²FCSH – NOVA University, Portugal

Abstract

What can be the role of music in museum exhibitions? That was the main issue when we conceived the curating project “From home towards a world…”. In the early weeks of the pandemic confinement new ideas emerged trying to overcome the once (and still) current situation. A group of Portuguese creators conceived the main idea, and the curating project was developed and presented at the 21st Bienal Internacional de Cerveira. The opening took place the 1st august 2020 but the journey of this exhibition did not end there. We might wonder about the impact of this exhibition, why suddenly so many directors and cultural centers in Portugal and Spain expressed such an interest about it. And the itinerancy will go on during 2021. The answer was prompt: the triadic connection between Literature, Painting and Music is quite unusual and proposes new glimpses that might surely to be more and more often developed in a near future of ours. The process took place between visual artists, writers and poets and then in a second phase, with composers (and musicians). Everything was achieved in unexpected completeness through zoom meetings, uncountable WhatsApp messages. Let us recall that this curating project reveals an historical goal that seduces philosophy, aesthetics, poetry and music since past knowledge and creation. The Aedo performances in Ancient Greece (Triunica Choreia) articulated intrinsically dance, music and poetry and deeply moved the audience. Curiously, for the main public, during centuries in Occidental Art History the aesthetic reception was much easily organized and surrounded by the power of image. Even nowadays, we understand that non-specialized audiences and publics are more acquainted with Contemporary Visual Arts than with the most recent languages and tendencies of Performative Arts. Sometimes people reveal their difficulties concerning its understanding. Of course, Literature astonishes their readers and questioned their aesthetic taste. But, never losing our faith, lets jump and recall the utopias by Nicolas Poussin, when in the 18th century he aimed for a kind of interrelated achievement of analogical contents between music, poetry, and painting. These and other ideas and facts, that we can easily identify in Literature, Art and Music History were bounced by the acting out of artists and musicians in the Occidental Avant-gardes in the early years of the 20th Futurism, Dadaism or Bauhaus and after, in Contemporary Culture Era with John Cage, Fluxus Group, among other cases. However, in a curating mood, most of the time, music assumed a kind of invisible presence, improving the aesthetic environment where the visual works were displayed, but not being interrelated at the state of a prime time of creation with words and images. The creation process that took place with From home towards a world… took as a huge challenge the accomplishment of a multisensory culture. We wanted to explore the challenge of incorporating 15 contemporary music composers in this curating process, in a third moment. The colors and words revealed the identity of inner worlds that are deeply thrown in the music, acoustic or electronic, performed by different musicians, instruments, or technological procedures.

Keywords: Curatorial Process, Museum Exhibitions, Writers, Visual Artists and Composers

Biography

Maria de Fátima Lambert [Alexandrino Alves de Sá Monteiro]. Born in Porto (Portugal). Graduation in Philosophy – Faculdade de Filosofia de Braga / Universidade Católica Portuguesa (1982); Master of Philosophy – Faculdade de Filosofia de Braga / Universidade Católica Portuguesa (1986); PHD in Philosophy / Aesthetics – Faculdade de Filosofia de Braga / Universidade Católica Portuguesa (1998); Coordinator Professor – Aesthetics and Education – – Escola Superior Educação / Politécnico do Porto Coordinator of Department – Cultural and Social Studies – Escola Superior Educação / Politécnico do Porto Member of Scientific Board of InEd – Research Center of Escola Superior Educação / Politécnico do Porto Director of InEd – Research Center of Escola Superior Educação / Politécnico do Porto (2014/2016) Member of Scientific Board of IHA – Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas – Universidade Nova de Lisboa Director of Heritage Managment Degree – Escola Superior Educação / Politécnico do Porto Director of Master of Philosophy – “Heritage, Arts and Cultural Tourism” Coordinator of Research Projects in: “Educação Estética e Formação de Públicos para a Arte Contemporânea”; “Cartografia do Pensamento no Porto do séc. XX”; “Práticas Culturais em Contextos Profissionais”; “Novos Caminhos de Santiago – trajetos na contemporaneidade”; “Cerâmica: memórias, matérias e modos – património material e imaterial” – inED | ESEPolitécnico do Porto Participation: “Bases Conceptuais da Investigação em Pintura” – FBAUP Art Curator; Art Critic – member of AICA (Paris) Comitee Advisory of DARDO Magazine (Santiago de Compostela / ES)

Paula Freire (V.N. Cerveira, 1962) is currently a master’s student in Aesthetics and Artistic Studies (specialization in Musical Arts and Musicology), at FCSH – UNL –Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She graduated in Modern Languages and Literature at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa. Her professional career began in 1980, in market and opinion research. In 1986, she founded her own company, specialized in qualitative market research, being its CEO. She has coordinated projects for some of the largest national and international companies. Since 2013, she continues working in the field, as an independent consultant. She lectured on market and opinion research at INDEG/ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, at UAL- Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, and, since 2009, at FCSH-UNL.