Lilia Moritz Schwarcz on Decolonial Curating and MASP's Histories Program

In an interview with André Mesquita and Amanda Carneiro, anthropologist and adjunct curator of histories at MASP Lilia Moritz Schwarcz discusses the relationship between her academic research and curatorial practice. She describes her approach as taking themes from social sciences to arrange artworks, contrasting with traditional curators who think through art. Schwarcz highlights the importance of images and the influence of Georges Didi-Huberman and Aby Warburg's Atlas Mnemosyne. She reflects on MASP's Histories program, particularly the 2018 exhibition 'Afro-Atlantic Histories', which attracted a wider Black audience and was named one of the best exhibitions by The New York Times. The exhibition, co-curated with Ayrson Heráclito and Hélio Menezes, shifted from 'Histories of Slavery' to emphasize productive aspects. Schwarcz discusses the need for decolonizing curatorial practices, including involving Indigenous curators for the 2021 'Indigenous Histories'. She addresses the political context under Brazil's conservative wave and the murder of Marielle Franco, asserting that museums must engage with their political moment. Schwarcz notes the slow transformation in academia towards including Black and female thinkers, and the challenge of breaking with Western classification systems in museums.