As funções dos museus contemporâneos

Abstract

Since the twentieth century, there has been a considerable change in museums around the world, today, large museums in renovated areas of degraded urban centers, along with international events have been transformed into products for the promotion of cities which are globalized. Thus, the audience becomes an important role in the success of the institutions and is a central question in the recognition of the museums as value aggregators in the urban network, generating functions that until then were not observed. The research elucidates the question of what are the functions of contemporary museums and how they relate, based on a working hypothesis, that the basic functions are to collect, to preserve, to study, to interpret and to expose. This work understood the relation between museums and functions, and what and how the functional unfoldings are present in this architectural typology. Through an exploratory research, with methodology divided in a documentary phase with the literature review, and an empirical phase with the accomplishment of studies in exemplary cases. The Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Niterói were chosen, aiming at verifying how functions manifest themselves, in addition to expanding the results beyond the theoretical framework. At the end, with the explication of the functions of contemporary museums, the initial hypothesis of the research is ratified and expanded. Added to it are other functional unfoldings that have more relevance in the proposed cut than the functions initially pointed out, such as theoretical, symbolic and aesthetic functions. We conclude that contemporary museums are multi-functional objects and that their functions extrapolate the practical functions exercised in it, having today a fundamental symbolic role for urban centers