Abdias Nascimento: Second Act of Black Art Museum

Jointly curated with IPEAFRO (Institute for Afro-Brazilian Research and Studies), Inhotim hosts a museum within its space and features, in a period spanning two years, the project conceived by Abdias Nascimento (1914–2011) in the early 1950s: the Black Art Museum.    

The project is inspired by the multidisciplinary legacy of Nascimento, who was a poet, playwright, curator, visual artist, university professor, Pan-Africanist and parliamentarian, and who had a long trajectory in activism and in the fight against racism. Presented in four acts (four temporary exhibitions, renewed every five months), the project carried out at Inhotim is based on the aspects of four Orixás, constant presences in the artist’s paintings, and in the Museum’s history and developments.    

Under the sign of Oxóssi, guardian of the forests and Orixá of the throne of knowledge, the Second Act of the project, entitled Dramas para negros e prólogo para brancos (Dramas for blacks and prologue for whites), covers a period in which theater play a central role in Abdias Nascimento’s artistic and political development, and in the initial conception of the collection of the Black Art Museum, from 1941 to 1968—the year in which Nascimento set off on his exile in the United States and Nigeria.    

On view at the Galeria Mata, the show addresses the Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN) (Black Experimental Theatre)—an initiative from which the Black Art Museum was born. Created by Abdias Nascimento in 1944 in Rio de Janeiro, the TEN’s central purpose was for black people to conquer space in the performing arts.    

The exhibition offers audiences documents on the trajectory of the Black Experimental Theatre, paintings by Nascimento and artworks by such artists as Anna Bella Geiger, Heitor dos Prazeres, Iara Rosa, José Heitor da Silva, Sebastião Januário, Octávio Araújo and Yêdamaria, who are part of IPEAFRO’s Black Art Museum collection.    

Divided into eight chronological sections (1941—Trip to Latin America / 1943—Theater of the Sentenced / 1944—Black Experimental Theatre / 1950—1st Congress of the Brazilian Negro / 1955—Black Christ / 1968—MAN at the Museu da Imagem e do Som of Rio de Janeiro January / 1966—World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar—Senegal / 1968—Exile), the Second Act presents an extensive documentary research and proposes a new regard to the Black Art Museum’s collection, now under the care of IPEAFRO. The focus lies on the importance of the collection as a device for the appreciation and recognition of ancestral African values in Brazilian society. 

The Black Experimental Theatre remained active until 1968 and it was during one event, the 1st Congresso do Negro Brasileiro (1st Congress of Black Brazilians), held in Rio de Janeiro in 1950, that the project for the Black Art Museum took shape.     

The Second Act of Black Art Museum is part of the program opened in May 2022 at Inhotim. In addition to this exhibition, the museum displays new exhibitions and projects with artworks by Isaac Julien, Arjan Martins, Laura Belém and Jaime Lauriano. 

Find out more about the program here.