THE LIVING MUSEUM
In the living school that were the sculpture and painting studios, the school I attended every day, issues were constantly raised. Difficulties that led to passionate studies which often called for help from outside the field of psychiatry—from art, myths, religions, literature, in which the deepest of human emotions have always found expression.
Nise da Silveira
Created as a centre for study and research, the Museum of Images from the Unconscious (Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente) cares for and disseminates an important heritage of humanity, always keeping its doors open to researchers and the general public.
Its Therapeutic Studios receive daily people who create new visual documents, and share their experiences of interaction with students, researchers, or visitors.
The production in these studios results in artworks that reveal the inner richness of human beings, and contribute to shifting stigmatizing paradigms about people with mental disorders.
The museum’s art depository stores, organizes, and preserves this production, a collection that holds more than 400.000 works, including canvases, papers, sculptures, texts, and poems.
In addition to organizing exhibitions inside and outside of its walls, the museum releases publications and documentaries, courses, lectures and debates. It has a Study Group on themes connected to the collection and the studios, with meetings open to anyone who is interested.
The set of activities generated by the interactivity of all the sectors encourages the engagement between regular attendees, technicians, employees, visitors, co-therapist animals — and the images. As a result of that engagement, the museum maintains its fundamental characteristic: being a territory for the freedom of expression of inner, lived experiences, and the exaltation of creativity