A Day in the Life of a High School Administrator: Changes-Tupac

Tuesday we woke up to rain, we were disappointed but need to remember that it is winter in Rio. Because it was supposed to be rainy all day, we decided to find a few indoor things to do. Tami and I had heard good things about the new museum-Museum of Art of Rio so we went to check it out. We were proud of ourselves for navigating the subway because we had to go clear across town to the port area. As we were walking the last few blocks to the museum we experienced first-hand the density of the 6.3 million people who live in Rio. The sidewalks were jam packed with people going to and from work. Just as I was thinking how many people there are, I was reminded that it is truly a small world. As we walked up to the ticket office, we ran into Gina, our program guide from TGC who lives in Rio. It was fun to feel a personal connection in such a huge city.

View from the top floor

New friends

old map of Rio

Lucky for us, Tuesdays the museum is free to the public so we began exploring. To start, you take an elevator six floors up and then wind your way down throughout the museum. The museum is a combination history of art about Rio de Janeiro and modern art of Brazil. The first floors were historical art about Rio with maps and paintings dating back to the 1600s. It was fun to see the land features we now recognized as they changed over the years. I was surprised to see how densely populated the area was already by 1830. The historic art was interesting and right up Liza and I’s history teacher alley. I most enjoyed the floor with modern Brazilian art which centered a lot on social issues. There were some fascinating pieces about housing, favelas, and injustice. One striking collection was a series of photographs of a boy in prison for his involvement with druglords and murder. The photographs were powerful, but what was really disturbing was an interview in which he described some of the actions that resulted in his imprisonment. It was chilling as he casually talked about throwing tires over someone and lighting them on fire, or killing his first person at age 11. I felt completely safe my entire trip to Brazil, even in Rio, but I was reminded of the fact that Brazil does have the highest homicide rate of any country in the world. Even though we tried to expose ourselves to some of the realities of Brazil by visiting the favela, there are some things we were thankful not to see.

This photograph was one of my favorite modern art pieces

This was a cool piece in which the artist put a map of the city in a central square and people added comments

National Cathedral

We didn’t finish the museum until after 3 and were starving so we walked down to the central business part of town to a famous square with the Teatro Municipal, Library, and other well known buildings. We stopped at one of the oldest bars in Rio for a quick drink and snack and took shelter from the rain.

Liza had been to this area earlier on her trip so she showed us the famous aqueduct in the Santa Teresa neighborhood and then we walked through a very sketchy area to the Escadaria Selarón. This famous mosaic staircase was the project of the artist Jorge Selarón who was from Chile, but lived in Rio for several decades. In the early 1990s he started tiling the stairs outside his apartment and the mosaic tile staircase became a life long project lasting over 20 years. He started tiling in the colors of the Brazilian flag-green, yellow and blue. Then added red, a color that was personally significant to Selarón. However, as he worked he began incorporating antique tiles and then tourists that visited him brought tiles from all over the world. It is now a collection of 4,000+ tiles from all over the world. It is fascinating to walk around and look at all of the tiles. Tami was able to find many tiles from Utah but Liza and I couldn’t find any from Montana or Colorado. Sadly there may never be tiles from our states as the artist was murdered on the staircase earlier this year. After a conflict with an apprentice, Selaron was found burned to death on his stairs in January/February. Such a tragedy wrapped up a day full of an interesting dichotomy between art and violence.