Representations of black people in Brazilian museums

Abstract

This article investigates the different ways Brazilian museums have represented the issue of blackness. Concerning current exhibitions, three main aspects are considered: the silence and exaggeration of the race issue in museum exhibits; the representation of passivity of the black population in historical narratives, and, the over exposition of the suffering and humiliation of the black population during slavery. The main argument developed is that Brazilian racial democracy discourses involve discrimination at many different levels, since racism is reproduced by the intertwinement of narratives that were produced in different historical periods. It is important to notice that new narratives are not free from those which preceded them, and that old practices of discrimination survive within new representations of blackness.