Terra Collection-in-Residence: Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo

Created in 1963, the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo (MAC USP) uses its collection of international modern and contemporary art toward the training of new professionals in art history, art criticism, and museum studies. The collection includes works by modern artists such as Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Wassily Kandinsky, Tarsila do Amaral, Anita Malfatti, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, Alfredo Volpi, and Lygia Clark, as well as possessing a significant collection of Italian art from the beginning of the twentieth century.

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A person standing in an art gallery in front of a wall of many different artworks, pointing specifically at one.

Works on paper from the Terra Foundation Art Collection installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo. Photo by Evandro Carlos Nicolau

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In recent decades, MAC USP has continued to expand its modern and contemporary collections with works by international and Brazilian artists. The museum is closely tied to academic research since curators are university professors and continue to research the collection around themes related to art history, theory, and criticism of art, as well as museology and education.

Professors from the University of São Paulo, the University of Campinas, and the Federal University of São Paulo collaborated to select paintings and prints from the Terra Foundation for a two-year loan. The museum uses these works as primary source material for undergraduate and graduate courses alike. The works are displayed in a “Research Gallery,” which differs from a traditional exhibition space because it was specifically designed for study and teaching; undergraduate and graduate classes regularly meet there. One class, “The Self and the Other: Interpersonal Relations and Alterity in Art,” invites students to think about aesthetics, interpersonal relationships, and alterity while studying works from the Terra Foundation.

“Reception of the gallery has been very good, and the museum is making it possible that any professor can schedule time in the gallery,” said Ana Gonçalves Magalhães, Director, Full Professor, and Curator at MAC USP. “It is a research gallery and teaching space, so the museum organized a calendar to balance the teaching in the gallery with periods when the works on paper must be protected from light exposure behind a curtain.”

Six paintings and 30 works on paper are on loan for a period of two years (February 2024–February 2026). Click here for a full list of objects on loan.

Selected Objects on Loan