Monumentalizing “premature ruins”: the Belo Horizonte Historical Museum and Juscelino Kubitschek’s museum imagination

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how the Belo Horizonte Historical Museum is a first manifestations of Juscelino Kubitschek’s museum imagination (1902-1976) and the singularities of this project in the context of the Brazilian museological context. Although there are several studies on the trajectory of the former president of Brazil, his thinking about museums and heritage still needs to be analyzed in depth. In this way, through documental analysis and bibliographic review, analyzes decisive moments of the museum’s conception, inaugurated in 1943, the strategies and some articulations of the then mayor of the capital of Minas Gerais, in order to consolidate his museological thought, were reconstructed, like the relationship with journalist Abílio Barreto, organizer of the History Section of the Municipal Archive of Belo Horizonte, and with lawyer Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade, director of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service. It concludes that the creation of the Belo Horizonte Historical Museum translates the configuration of a singular museal imagination. In this respect, despite not breaking with the speeches of most Brazilian museums of his time, he opted for the insertion of recent history, recognizing the museum as one of the spaces in the dispute for projects of the future.