Museus contemporâneos e os novos sentidos da relação espaço e cultura

Abstract

Urban museums are valuable study objects because they showcase the contemporary global transformations of culture and space. They are connected to these transformations not only through their collections but also due to their interaction with urban settings. This paper presents the first results of an empirical research about museums in Lisbon, Brasília and Belo Horizonte that focuses on two dimensions: 1) the increasingly strong attachment of cultural spaces in the cultural industry, due to the hegemonic reorganisation of capital, of technological innovations, of new visual information apparatus and 2) the re-elaboration of the sense of place, since these spaces are becoming increasingly important for the image and identity of cities. This relevance emerges due to global factors, namely the growth of the international tourism and leisure industry, but it is also locally grounded, as these are places of encounter, of interaction and of fruition of the architecture and the exhibited objects.