After passing through a renovation conducted by Paulo Mendes da Rocha in the 1990s, the museum became one of the most dynamic cultural institutions of the country, lining up with the international circuit of exhibitions, hosting cultural events and keeping an active bibliographic production.[4] "Pina", as the museum is also known, administrates the art space called Estação Pinacoteca[pt] (Portuguese for "Pinacoteca Station), or Pina Estação, installed in an old building which was once owned by the DOPS, in Bom Retiro district, where it holds temporary contemporary art exhibitions, the Walter Wey Library and the institution's documentation center, called Documentation and Memory Center.
The Pinacoteca houses one of the largest and most representatives Brazilian art collections, mainly noted for its vast assemblage with more than ten thousand pieces of art covering mostly the history of Brazilian painting in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is also noteworthy the Brasiliana Collection, a collection composed by foreign artists actives in Brazil or inspired by the country iconography, the Nemirovsky Collection, with an ample and expressive collection of masterpieces of Brazilian modernism and, recently, the Roger Wright Collection, received by the institute in January 2015.
Logotype and naming
Reading by Almeida Júnior (1850–1899), found in the museum's collection.
Since January 2006, Pinacoteca uses a logo representing only its nickname, "Pina".[5] According to the director of institutional relations at the museum, Paulo Vicelli, the changing oficializes the name that the visitors were already using. The Pinacoteca Station started being named as "Pina Station", and the Jardim da Luz museum as "Pina Luz". The new visual identity was created by the publicity agency F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi[pt]. The memorable elements from the museum architecture, such as the columns, the wall bricks and the grand staircase, makes appearances in the visual identity.[citation needed]
History
Background
The Pinacoteca origins takes you back to the criation of the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts of São Paulo. This one is a result of a context of intense social, political and economic changes that took place in São Paulo at the second half of the 19th century. The then province, which remained quite discreet until the 1870s, was transmuting, boosted by the coffee cycle expansion and the rail transport settlement. The country was receiving extensive flow of immigrants (intensified after the slavery abolitionism), that allowed meaningful transformations, embracing from the material culture and eating habits to the recently developed forms of socialization. The urban centers were becoming more modern and denser. In the city of São Paulo, the net worth accumulated by the coffee producers were reinvested in the newly industry. Brand new buildings were built and the rammed earth technique was taking the brickwork place. Noble neighborhoods were built to house the manor houses and palaces of the coffee barons, following the European architectural standards, marked by eclecticism. More numerous were the working-class neighborhoods that emerged, rapidly expanding the urban core.[6][7]
2008 heist
On June 12, 2008, three armed men broke into the museum with a crowbar and a carjack around 5:09am and stole The Painter and the Model (1963) and Minotaur, Drinker and Women (1933) by Pablo Picasso, Women at the Window (1926) by Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, and Couple (1919) by Lasar Segall. It was the second theft of art in São Paulo in six months, with a similar robbery having occurred at the São Paulo Museum of Art on December 20, 2007 in which works by Picasso and Candido Portinari had been taken. On August 6, 2008, two paintings were discovered in the house of one of the thieves and recovered by police in the same city.[8][9][10]
Collection
The Pinacoteca has a wide-ranging collection of Brazilian art, mainly noted for its vast assemblage of 19th-century paintings and sculptures, one of the largest in the country, as well as for a number of iconic Brazilian Modernist artworks.[3] The collection also includes a department of works on paper, European paintings and sculptures from 19th-century artists, decorative arts, etc.
Innovation
In 2017, IBM partnered with Pinacoteca de São Paulo for the 'Voice of Art' project, using Watson to allow visitors to interact with artworks like 'Mestiço' by Cândido Portinari, Saudade, by Almeida Junior (1899), Lindonéia, a Gioconda do subúrbio, by Rubens Gerchman (1966). through a smartphone app, blending technology with art engagement.[11][12]
Paintings
(selection)
Stella Alves de Lima Cyprien Eugène Boulet[es] (unknown date)
