Issues of documentation and conservation of digital art

14. Jänner 2025, 10.15 Uhr Kunstuniversität Linz, Domgasse 1, Interface Cultures Lecture Room

Study Cases at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP)

Interface Cultures lädt zum Gastvortrag von Ana Magalhães.

Since its foundation at one of the biggest universities in Latin America, the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, in Brazil, has pioneered collecting new media, mainly through the research and activities of its first director, Walter Zanini (1924-2013). His insight into the practices in contemporary art during the 1960s and 1970s, and the network of international exchanges he built between other countries in Latin American and the United States, Germany, France, Italy, but also many Eastern Europe countries, has established a fundamental principle of “collecting the new” in the museum.  

This was reaffirmed as MAC USP became the first museum in Brazil to collect digital art, through the bequest of works by artists Glbertto Prado, Giselle Beiguelman, and more recently, the commission and incorporation of 2 NFTs, by artists Gustavo von Ha and Regina Silveira. In this lecture, I will discuss some aspects of the cataloging and conservation of these works, and the many complexities in preserving media art. 

Minibio Ana Magalhães is a Brazilian art historian, curator, and Full Professor of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP). She is an expert in the visual arts of the 20th century, focusing on a transnational approach of Modernism, more specifically in the exchange between Italy and Brazil, material art history, as well as archiving/documenting and cataloging practices in art museums in the framework of digital humanities. She was invited to teach at the University of Florida, the University of Hamburg, the Università degli Studi di Milano, the Université Paris 8 - Saint Denis, and the University of Vienna. She was a Guest Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, in Los Angeles and a curatorial researcher at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome.

Among her publications are the catalogs Classicismo, Realismo, Vanguarda: Pintura Italiana no Entreguerras [Classicism, Realism, Avant Garde: Italian Painting between the Wars] (1st edition, 2013; 2nd edition, 2018), Um Outro Acervo do MAC USP. Prêmios-Aquisição da Bienal de São Paulo, 1951-1963 [Another Collection of MAC USP. Acquisition Awards of the São Paulo Biennial, 1951-1963] (2019), and the books Possible Futures: Art, Museum and Digital Archives (2014, in co-authorship with Giselle Beiguelman), Classicismo Moderno. Margherita Sarfatti e a Pintura Italiana no MAC USP [Modern Classicism. Margherita Sarfatti and Italian Painting at MAC USP] (2016), and Boccioni no Brasil. Reavaliando Formas Únicas da Continuidade no Espaço e sua História Material [Boccioni in Brazil. Revaluating Unique Forms of Continuity in Space and Its Material History] (2022).