Heritage, Memory and Innovation
COMISSIONERS
Gonçalo Carvalho Amaro and João Miguel SimõesORGANISATION
Museu de São Roque - Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa e Departamento de Gestão Imobiliária e Património | Direção de Cultura | Fundo Rainha D. LeonorJean Paul Sartre once wrote a well-known poem comparing a ceramic vase to a person, highlighting the parallels between the nomenclature of the human body and the terminology of ceramic pieces: “the vase has a neck, you have a neck; the vase has a shoulder, you have a shoulder”, concluding that as in people, the most important thing “is its content”.
This last sentence is intended to be the leitmotif of this exhibition: the content of the objects, the stories they can tell. Based on a broader context of heritage which, after the 2003 convention, broadly included intangible heritage in its guidelines, we can consider that objects are not just elements that decorate the scenography of human action; they are an integral part of the same action. We could thus affirm that museums are not only made of belles pièces. In this sense we intend to make an exhibition with pieces – mostly little known – from the Museum of São Roque and other Misericórdias, objects which fundamental element is not so much their artistic beauty, but rather their history, their narrative content.
