MASP

RESEARCH CENTER

Service

The Research Center supports researchers by appointment, from Monday to Friday, 1pm to 6pm. To book your appointment, please send an email to centrodepesquisa@masp.org.br.

To consult Rare and Special Works you must present proof of your institutional affiliation and a letter from your institution indicating the purpose of your research.

To consult the bibliographical catalog, please access the Online Catalog.

The Research Center holds one of the main art-related archives in Brazil. Its aim is to preserve and make accessible its publications and documents concerning the museum and the arts.

The department was originally created in the form of the MASP Library for the museum’s 30th anniversary in 1977, when Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) and Pietro Maria Bardi (1900-1999) donated their book collection to the museum. In the 1990s, the department expanded its activities by incorporating the documents concerning the museum’s program. Subsequently, from 2017, in line with a new understanding about its role, the initiative was named the Research Center.

The bibliographical archive contains more than 70 thousand publications, including rare and special works, museum and exhibition catalogs, zines, dictionaries, theses and periodicals on the themes of art, architecture, design, fashion, aesthetics, and history.

Amongst national and international periodicals, the highlights are O Cruzeiro, Habitat, Mirante das Artes, Gazette des Beaux Arts, ArtForum and Frieze. Additionally, it also holds the museum’s publications, which include exhibition catalogs, books, and anthologies.

The archival collection also contains all institutional documentation that records the creation of the museum, the setting up of its collection, the construction of the building on Paulista Avenue, and the organization of exhibitions, amongst other activities. It also comprises different types of records, such as written documents (letters, exhibition proposals, texts and articles, notes, and newspaper cuttings, amongst others), visual documents (exhibition and event posters, photographs, slides, and negatives), audiovisual and digital documents, amongst others.

As well as the documentation produced by MASP, the Research Center also comprises the Reference Archive, which contains dossiers on national and international artists, cultural entities and art movements, with its own Individual Fonds and Collections.

CMPC believes in the transformative power of art. As such, we support several cultural initiatives, such as the MASP Research Center, which contributes towards the preservation of rare books and materials, creating an ideal environment for the conservation of the memory of several authors and the public’s access to such works.