The Reconstruction of the Crystal Easels at the São Paulo Museum of Art and the Canonization of a Decolonial Expography

Abstract

In 2015, the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) opened the exhibition Picture Gallery in Transformation using the exhibit display format designed by the museum’s architect, the Italo-Brazilian Lina Bo Bardi. The crystal easels, as they became known, were conceived to converse with the building’s architecture, yet had disappeared from the museum’s second floor for almost two decades, replaced by traditional hanging methods. The purpose of this article is to examine the various reasons behind the removal of Bo Bardi’s expography and the controversies that have contributed to a new valuation of the crystal easels. Through an analysis of the reconstruction of MASP’s permanent collection, the technical and conceptual changes that guided it, and the curatorial discourses that reconstituted its permanent displays, I argue that the characteristics of Bo Bardi’s easels contribute to the decolonial programme of the new MASP management.