Life as Heritage

Museums play a significant role in the cultural ecosystem around the world, because of their capillarity, institutionalism, and diversity, especially in the face of social transformations and challenges. During the pandemic, the museal sector produced useful knowledge to cope with the crisis for all segments of culture. As the first spaces to reopen, they led the discussion on health protocols and economic impacts of the pandemic, such as regulations and research produced by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). In addition, they played a key role as a space for research on coronavirus transmission that served as a reference for the ongoing cultural recovery.

 

Furthermore, projects and actions in museums in different parts of the world during the pandemic have shown us what the role of the cultural sector may be for preserving people’s health and life. For Lucimara Letelier (2020), former institutional director of the Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro and creator of the Museu Vivo movement, the pandemic demonstrated that "museums can bring life when death is so present in everyday life. (...) And this moment reminds us of the responsibility of museums regarding the heritage, (for bringing) an expanded notion of heritage. Life as a heritage.”

 

This reflection is even more important in a country like Brazil, where the coronavirus and the criminal mismanagement of an anti-scientific government were responsible for the deaths of more than 600,000 people. In a context like this, the preservation of life is up to everyone, and this includes, or should include all museums.

 

Fortunately, since the beginning of the pandemic, we have seen some inspiring initiatives in Brazil that show how actions related to the defense of life and health promotion can be a way for museums to maintain, expand or build new forms of social relevance for their communities and territories. In this article, we will present three examples of actions developed by different agents of the museal sector in Brazil, related to communication strategies; community engagement and mental health projects and use of spaces to support vaccination campaigns.

 

 

In Brazil, the relationship between the cultural sector and health is still quite incipient. Accordingly, there has been a lack of national evidence-based research projects on the benefits that the arts can offer to health promotion. However, the theme has gained some prominence during the pandemic and the museum sector has contributed to this debate through different activities.

 

For example, in May 2021, the Brazilian Committee of ICOM (ICOM Brazil) launched the campaign #MuseusPelaVida (Museums for Life), an ongoing action to mobilize museum institutions to disseminate content encouraging the vaccine and the adoption of prevention practices for COVID-19. According to Renata Motta, president of ICOM Brazil, the main motivation for the campaign was the perception that during the pandemic "museums could not be oblivious to the reality in which they are included”. Contributing to this motivation were the results of the ICOM Brazil survey conducted in 2020 with museum audiences. The research states that the audiences expect museums to be more engaged with social agendas. 

 

The idea for the campaign came about in March 2021, when the pandemic completed its first year and when it was still unclear how quickly the vaccination would take place. "So, we thought: how an organization like ICOM Brazil could call museums for an action, inviting them to be more visible and more active at this time?” Renata Motta explained in an interview. 

 

The #MuseuspelaVida campaign was launched on May 10, the week before the International Museum Day (May 18). More than creating and disseminating a simple hashtag, it stimulated the museums to create content about the pandemic involving their collections, to promote digital events and to engage their audiences through content focused on encouraging vaccination and pandemic prevention practices. To elaborate the campaign, a counseling group was formed with the participation of two science museums (Museum of Life/ FioCruz) and Museum of Microbiology/ Butantã Institute) and representatives of the Brazilian Network of University Museums. These partners were responsible for creating a repository of texts and materials about prevention of COVID-19, made available on the ICOM Brasil website. The ICOM Brasil team also produced a toolkit, with a campaign logo and a guide for museums.

 

The campaign had spontaneous participation of dozens of museums throughout Brazil, of all sizes and types. In the first two months, there were about seven hundred publications, 1.7 million people reached, 46,800 interactions on social networks. For Renata Motta, the campaign showed that every museum could do something to defend life. "Our campaign sought to respect the diversity of Brazilian museums and was strategic in its format, considering that most of the museums were closed and did not have staff and or financial resources to develop more complex actions in the fight against the pandemic.”

 

 

The ICOM Brazil campaign shows that virtual action, through social media content, could be a viable way for museums to participate in the fight against the pandemic. However, even with the programming suspended and closed for visitation, some Brazilian museums sought to engage more directly and beyond social media. This was the case of two important museums in Rio de Janeiro: the Museu da República (Museum of the Republic) and the Museu da Maré (Maré Museum).

 

The Museum of the Republic (Museu da República) is a historical museum located in the Catete Palace, former presidential residence (before Brasilia became the capital of Brazil in 1960). It is linked to the Brazilian Institute of Museums and the federal government. Closed to the visitation since March 2020, the Museum operated between February and June 2021 as a vaccination site for COVID-19, through a partnership with the Municipal Health Department and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz).[1] In 4 months, more than 100,000 people were vaccinated in the museum by the team of the Manoel José Ferreira Municipal Health Center, located in the same neighborhood. The initiative took people for the first time to the museum - and not just those who went to get vaccinated. Doctors and interns of the vaccination team had the opportunity to participate in guided tours in the museum, conducted by museologists.

 

The case of the Museu da Maré (Maré Museum), also in Rio de Janeiro, is a remarkable example of how museums, regardless of their size, may be relevant to their communities in times of crisis. The Maré Museum was created in 2006, as one of the projects of the Center for Study and Solidary Actions of Maré - CEASM. In the museal typology, it is what is called a "community museum”, created with the aim of preserving and sharing the history, heritage and memory of residents and their territory. The museum is located in the Maré neighborhood, a complex of 17 favelas in Rio de Janeiro’s Northern Zone, where about 140,000 people live.[2] 

 

Right across the Museum Street there is a public community health center, with whom the Museum had a basic relationship, as well as with other public health centers located in the neighborhood. However, as Luiz Antonio Oliveira, co-founder of the Museum, explained in an interview, the museum’s relationship with the health as a topic changed radically with the arrival of the pandemic: The museum suspended its activities on March 16, 2020, shortly after the pandemic arrived in Brazil. As soon as they became aware that a civil society collective was conducting a communication campaign about the pandemic in the neighborhood, the Museum team decided to support the initiative through voluntary work and with financial support to help in the purchase of paints, tracks and sound car used to communicate to the Maré population the ways to protect themselves from COVID-19. This initiative gave rise to the Frente de Mobilização da Maré (Maré Mobilization Front), a collective of ten organizations in the neighborhood, of which the Museum was a central agent for receiving donations and raising funds for other actions. "We were not protagonists, we always saw ourselves as partners of a great action,” says Luiz Oliveira.

 

Between May and November 2020, the Museum centralized the donation of more than 8,000 food and hygiene kits, aimed at more than 4,000 families in the community. The Museum’s warehouse and administrative areas were made available to the campaign team and to store the donations. The museum team, composed of twenty people, also participated in the registration of families and the organization of logistics for the distribution of donations, which were delivered to the families’ homes. In addition, the Museum shared information on its social networks and promoted online debates about COVID-19 prevention.

 

Because of this work, the Museum created in 2021, with financial support from the Fiocruz Foundation, the Maré do Bem Viver (Living Well Maré) project. This provides psychosocial support to 150 families in the community, in addition to informing and enabling access to public health services and creating therapeutic groups to address issues such as grief, anxiety, chronic diseases, and others. The project lasts 10 months, during which a multidisciplinary health team with psychologists, social workers, nutritionist, and doctors will support family members and strengthen the museum’s relationship with healthcare institutions, which will support the project’s actions. "Before the pandemic, the Maré Museum did not deal with public health”, explains Luiz Oliveira, "but all the work we do in Maré has a lot to do with our life and because of that the Museum should be open to any social demand that is socially relevant. Even if simply, we are always trying to focus on the necessary issues. That’s how we understand the issue of health at the time of the pandemic.”

 

Conclusion 

 

These examples show that, as a catalyst for transformation, the pandemic can also be an opportunity to broaden our understanding of the social role of museums. The pandemic is not over and there is still much to be done to deal with the consequences of this moment on the health, both physical and mental, of a vast number of people around the world. The question remains: What can museums continue to do? 

 

Unfortunately, we know that these initiatives were still an exception among the more than 3800 Brazilian museums, and it is hard to predict the extent to which these examples and their effects have changed the Brazilian museum landscape or will change it in the future. But that is precisely why they are worth sharing: they should serve as an inspiration and a call for action for all the museums in a still much challenging period of our history.

 

Through the integration of health as an important and transversal agenda for culture, museums and other cultural organizations can help themselves and society in a future in which the pandemic is not our main collective challenge in the long run. To enter and navigate the unpredictability of our future, there will be no social relevance that does not start from the understanding of life, of each of us and of the planet, as our main heritage.

 

 

• Davidow, Jackson (2021). The Healing Museum. Art in America. September/October 2021 issue, pp. 58-63. Available at:  https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/art-therapy-healing-museum-1234604543/.
• ICOM Brazil (2020). DATA TO NAVIGATE THROUGH UNCERTAINTIES: Part II - Results of Museum Audience Survey 2020. Available at:  https://www.icom.org.br/?p=2121.
• INSTITUTE OF MUSEUM AND LIBRARY SERVICES. Understanding the Social Wellbeing Impacts of the Nation’s Libraries and Museums. Report, report. Available at: https://www.imls.gov/publications/understanding-social-wellbeing-impacts-nations-libraries-and-museums.
• Letelier, Lucimara A. S. (2020/2021). The future of post-pandemic museums: survival or reinvention? In: Revista Observatório Itaú Cultural. 28dez. 2020/Jun. 2021, São Paulo, N 28. 
• Simon, Nina. The Art of Relevance. Available at: http://www.artofrelevance.org/.