The 10th EPM is a maturity landmark

Regina Ponte*

POR | ESP

The ten years of uninterrupted action of the Encontro Paulista de Museus is a reason to bring pride and great satisfaction to the UPPM (Unit for Museological Patrimony’s Preservation) and SISEM (Sao Paulo State Museums System).

The Encontros and SISEM’s acting through these ten years made possible for us to get to know and to interlace all the different realities from approximately 500 museological institutions in Sao Paulo State. This effort regarding knowledge and action brought, as a result, a collective learning, which allowed the elaboration of public policies and strategic actions aiming Sao Paulo’s museological patrimony appraisal.

In order to systematize all the information in a shared and collaborative method, SISEM developed a database, the CEM-SP (State’s Register of Museums), and started its experimental application in Santos region, in 2016, and, since 2017, operates in all State’s regions. The CEM-SP has, currently, around 100 institutions on registration process.

These first CEM-SP actions have already brought to SISEM’s Council and team a series of reflections that point towards a review regarding the registration levels, for the sake of harboring institutions still on their early stages, but that clearly have the museological vocation – which means those that dedicate themselves to material and immaterial collections and to research and propagation.

Therefore, the CEM-SP maintains the inclusive character and sets itself as an instrument of public policies that contributes to the institutional qualification and strengthening. From this point of view, its consolidation will be dynamic, always aware of the presented realities.

We highlight as well, through the last ten years, the strengthening of a model that advocates acting alongside the society – not for the society – through partnerships with Culture Social Organizations that have been contributing to amplify the dialogue and the sociocultural development of different parts of the population and to implement UPPM’s and Sao Paulo Secretary of Culture’s public policies.

It is also interesting to observe that EPM celebrates its tenth anniversary at the same time that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights completes seventy years of existence. Aware of its social responsibility, UPPM has been elaborating, through Sao Paulo’s museums, campaigns and programs to bring to light communities and groups that, although representing an expressive part of society, still resent the retrenchment of their rights.

In addition, we also proudly celebrate that, from the 9th EPM opening’s protagonist, the Sexual Diversity Museum (Museu da Diversidade Sexual) is now officially part of the UPPM through the Decree n. 63.375, from May 4th, 2018.

It is in this perspective that, reaching its maturity, the Encontro Paulista de Museus projects to the next years a path anchored in public policies thought to the museological community with views and an agenda that favors everyone’s rights, based on the CEM-SP’s premises to the institutional strengthening of our museums, aiming to social change.

* Regina Ponte is graduated in Pedagogy and Plastic Arts, having acted in the Historical Patrimony Department of Sao Paulo’s Municipal Secretariat for Culture, from 2004 to 2013, and having worked as the director in Sao Paulo City Museum’s (Museu da Cidade de São Paulo), from 2011 to 2013. Currently, she acts as the Coordinator of the Unit for Museological Patrimony’s Preservation (UPPM), from Sao Paulo’s Secretary of Culture.

Versão em inglês feita por Carol Romão – professora de inglês, revisora e tradutora. Contato: carolinasromao@gmail.com