Feather art from the indigenous cultures of the Amazon in the collection of Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira at the Museum of Sciences of the University of Coimbra

• Grant number: 23/04130-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: October 01, 2023
• End date: December 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning - Fundamentals of Architecture and Urbanism
• Principal Investigator: Renata Maria de Almeida Martins
• Grantee: Giovanna Flameschi Angeloni
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 21/06538-9 - Baroque-açu: Portuguese America in the art geography of the global South, AP.JP2
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/01425-0 - Survey and study of the documentation and feather art objects from the collection of Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira at the Science Museum of the University of Coimbra., BE.EP.MS

Abstract

Inserted in a theoretical-methodological panorama of decolonial historiography, the Scientific Initiation research, financed by FAPESP, carried out between September 2020 - August 2021, on feather art in Portuguese America, will be continued, now focused on the Amazon at the end of the century XVIII.The way in which feather objects were reappropriated in Europe and America is a way of verifying the importance of their biographies in the context of cultural shocks and exchanges, as well as in the maintenance of a colonial logic of circulation and production of objects at a local and global level. In this case, a large volume of objects made with plundered feathers, from a vast and diverse indigenous society, is now scattered in various European museums and collections. Feather art pieces that are present in collections in Europe, were described and had their uses recorded in the colonial period. One of the most notable examples is the collection collected by the naturalist Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira as part of the Philosophical Journey through the Amazon (1783-1792), which presents feathers, both through drawings and through the material and cultural heritage ethnographic. Therefore, this master's project intends to survey and study the objects of feather art from part of Alexandre Ferreira's collection, through the important collection conserved at the Museum of Sciences of the University of Coimbra and which is digitized on the museum's website.