Gostos ecléticos em coleções, repercussões em museus nacionais: o caso da coleção Ferreira das Neves

Abstract

Jerônimo Ferreira das Neves (1854-1918), a Brazilian art collector, lived with his wife Eugênia Barbosa de Carvalho Neves (1860-1946) in Lisbon in the 1880s and 1890s, collecting an eclectic collection of rare books, coins, medals and art objects. The couple not only collected old pieces of aesthetic value, but also objects of life, of common use, making a complex diversity, reflecting the collecting practices of the period and of the so-called eclectic museums. Part of the collection was donated to the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes of Rio de Janeiro, formerly the Academia Imperial, in 1947, by testamentary will of Eugênia Neves, joining the collections of the D. João VI Museum, a museum of the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, created in 1979. Nearly 60 years after the donation of Eugênia Neves, following the renovation of the D. João VI Museum in the first decade of 21st century, the collection was publicly available in all its diversity and among the works of academic teaching. Such presentation of the collection recovers its eclectic nature and instigates new questions about nineteenth-century collections, modes of exhibition and understandings of art and its historiographic practices. Thus, from the reflections on Brazilian national museums and the collecting experiences of the 19th century in Rio de Janeiro, we discuss the repercussions of the donations to public institutions, their uses and implications in contemporary times.

Keywords

• Private colleting
• eclectic museum
• Jerônimo Ferreira das Neves
• collection Ferreira das Neves
• Museum D. João VI