Bodies that get confused with objects: the making of a material culture through kitchen utensils and appliances at the Museu Paulista

Abstract

This project aims for perform a comparative study of the food preparation in Brazil and in the United States. It seeks to understand the specificities of processed food consumption in both countries, given their different economic developments and historical processes. While free labor, industrialization, and technical innovations were introduced in the United States relatively early, the same did not occur among Brazilians. The slavery culture, soon replaced by one of salaried domestic servility, led to different ways of dealing with the preparation of food in the domestic environment. It has been hypothesized that in Brazil, unlike in the USA, there has been resistance to processed foods, as well as different uses, utensils and cooking equipment. The research will mobilize the collection of utensils and kitchen equipment belonging to the collection of the Paulista Museum (1870-1960) so that both - material sources and research - qualify within the curatorial cycle. Thus, in keeping with the research and its traditional academic products, cataloging of the referred collection, participation in thematic exhibition, the development of specific terms of the subgroup of thesaurus of objects on food processing and the making of an illustrated repertoire of kitchen equipment, carried out by the thematic project team to which this project is linked, will be performed. Thus, this research intends to qualify the collection of the museum, establish parameters for the policy of institutional acquisition of the collection, eventually feed its own collection of didactic material, collaborating with the curatorial reformulation of the museum that will be reopened in the Bicentennial of Independence in 2022. (AU)