A cidade e o museu: a origem, em 1904, do Museu Histórico da Bibliotheca Pública Pelotense.

Abstract

This study is an investigation of the reasons, more implicit than explicit, which gave rise to the Museu Histórico da Bibliotheca Pública Pelotense in 1904, providing theoretical support for studies of the relationships between cities and museums; in this case, Pelotas/RS and the MH-BPP at the beginning of the 20th century. In order to account for the several questions this study raises, hypotheses were defined and then analyzed based on data obtained from research in primary sources, with the aid of theoretical assumptions for the study of museums in the cultural heritage field. Preliminarily, several transformations can be perceived on the local panorama. These are occurring in an environment with strong social contrasts, including an elite who suffers from the power rearrangement in their region, the numbers of poor immigrants who left Europe in pursuit of establishing themselves in the vicinity the urban center of Pelotas and a large population of Africans and their descendants who, after the abolition of slavery, need to consolidate their rights and ensure their development. In contrast, the museums in Brazil, successfully or not, aim to meet a series of demands of a specific group, thereby serving to less generic and altruistic purposes than those of its official documents and speeches. This process indicated that that the creation of the "small museum annex to the Bibliotheca" was motivated by a political strategy based on issues related to the government by the memory through cultural heritage.