The Marcia and Luiz Chrysostomo Collection

We present GUARDAR, the first exhibition in a project that may, in the future, bring other private collections into the spaces of Casa Roberto Marinho. The breadth of the collection, the high quality of its works, and the rigorous criteria behind its formation all contributed greatly to our decision to invite Marcia and Luiz Chrysostomo.

The exhibition represents a fraction of what the couple has brought together in three decades. Paulo Venancio Filho’s curatorial selection focuses on the roots of international constructive art and its subsequent developments, along with artists’ books, kinetic art, and the visual use of words in works of art.

During the process, Chrysostomo told us something surprising: his first sense of what a private collector could achieve came in 1985, while still very young, through three visits to “Seis décadas de arte moderna na Coleção Roberto Marinho”, an exhibition of the Roberto Marinho Collection at the Paço Imperial.

At that time, Rio de Janeiro was going through a difficult period for the visual arts. The recently restored Museu de Arte Moderna was not yet operating at full capacity, while the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes was focused primarily on renovating its galleries and conserving its collection. The Paço Imperial rose to prominence, and attendance at “Seis décadas (...)”, with its extensive program of related activities, reached the impressive figure of around 1,000 visitors a day.

The public response made it clear that the former palace should primarily serve as a venue for visual art exhibitions. Glauco Campello led a creative reconfiguration of the palace’s spaces, giving Rio de Janeiro back a cultural center in the heart of the city. It restored to public life the imposing interiors of a building that had been the setting for some of the most important events in Brazilian history.

Today, forty-one years later, once again in November, but this time at the Casa in Cosme Velho, Marcia and Luiz’s beautiful exhibition follows the words of Brazilian poet Antonio Cícero’s poem Guardar to the letter: “To keep [guardar] something is not to hide it or lock it away.” Made visible, the works may enlighten visitors and, in turn, be illuminated by them.

Lauro Cavalcanti
Executive Director | Casa Roberto Marinho