Get to know the online collection of USP’s Ipiranga Museum
Recently, USP’s Ipiranga Museum inaugurated a new website which hosts its collection of paintings, documents, and sculptures. Virtually, the public is able to admire the artworks and also find out more about the research projects that take place at the museum. The website’s objective is to make the museum’s universe and collection more accessible. Learn more about the Ipiranga Museum here.
Photo: Marcos Santos/USP Imagens
People interested in going to the Ipiranga Museum that aren’t able to do so in person are now able to visit it virtually. On January 31st 2023, the museum made its collection available online in a digital platform, with an objective to make the knowledge produced inside the museum’s circuit more accessible to the public. The website grants access not only to the collection preserved by the museum, but also to all the research related to them.
Specialized in the history of Brazilian society, with an emphasis on material culture, the Ipiranga Museum has a collection of around 30 thousand items, among them paintings, photographs, posters, and more 25 thousand objects. The new digital collection is divided in iconographic, textual, and tridimensional documents. Every three months, new curations will be available at the website.
The digital museum utilizes a tool called Tainacan, an open software developed by the Network Intelligence Lab of Brasília University. The Tainacan allows a search for various collections as well as has a function directed to programs of digital curation. The initiative invites researchers to mobilize the Ipiranga Museum’s collections on their research and propose thematic or typological divisions that may interest viewers while consulting the digital archive. For the inauguration, three different curations have been made available at the website, which range from a collection of portraits to a collection of postcards and a history of visual representations of an important location of the city of São Paulo.
Photo: Cecília Bastos/USP Imagens
A brand new Ipiranga Museum
On September 7st 2022, the Ipiranga Museum was reopened after nine years under renovation. The event was scheduled to take place in celebration of the two hundred anniversary of Brazilian independence. After an investment of more than R$ 235 million Brazilian reais, the Ipiranga Museum is one of the most complete and most modern museums in all of Latin America today.
With an estimated public of 1 million visitors a year, the museum doubled its total constructed area and built a new entrance, new exhibit room, new ticket office and many more features. The modernized space has elevators, escalators, and air conditioning system, and is completely accessible to people with disabilities, even when it comes to the artworks and documents in exhibition. Regarding the restoration, repairs were made to the details of the architecture, including the entrance, the interiors, and carpentry elements.
The museum was integrated into the University of São Paulo in 1963, but even before the official integration the museum was already an important branch of research and activities of USP’s academic community. Located in the Independence Park complex, the museum was considered a city, state and federal historical heritage site and, under USP’s administration, hosts activities related to teaching, research and extension, the acting basis of the University.
To visit Ipiranga Museum’s digital collection use the link: https://acervoonline.mp.usp.br