Salvador Day 6

August 2nd
Today was our last day in Salvador! Angelika and I decided to continue the easier pace of our travels and we decided to go to an art museum in Graca and to meet up with our friend Jessica from Vanderbilt who has been in a study abroad program here in Salvador. The museum we went to was called Palacete das Artes, and it is a small cultural center and art exhibition space that is in a beautiful old mansion on a tree lined street that made me feel like I was in New Orleans or Charleston. In fact, you really understand how similar the colonial south and colonial areas of Latin America were in their city structures and economic bases. The museum is an interesting combination of tradition, in that the original features and rooms of the house have been preserved, and modernism though the abstract and contemporary art that fills the rooms. The house had three floors of sculpture and photography as well as a sculpture garden, a restaurant in the back and another contemporary exhibition space which was showing and interesting exhibit on video and soccer.
At 2:00 we met up with Jessica to go by a local bakery known for its cakes (you know you are in Brazil when you only have to walk a few feet and you can find three desert places). I also got a little lunch and we sat on the terrace and talked about our different experiences with the two language programs. I decided that their program was better about giving students a Brazilian host family experience, and our program had better classes, location and exploration of multiple sides of Brazilian culture and history. Our discussion really made me value my time in São Paulo and all of the things we were able to do there so much more!
Our original plan was that, after we met with Jessica we would go to the Modern Art Museum of Salvador which is supposed to have amazing sunset views. However, by the time we finished our visit it was already rush hour was beginning and we would have needed to take a bus through the center, so we changed the plan. Instead, we decided to go to the historic light house, Farol de Barra that also had a nautical museum of Salvador’s maritime history. We were able to catch the sunset from the top of the lighthouse and got some really great shots and views of Salvador.
After the sun set we went back down to check out the museum, which actually had some really neat information about underwater archaeology recoveries that have been done on the many early colonial ship wrecks that dot the coastline. They also had some interesting information on slavery and ‘diversity’ in Brazil. It was really interesting to read the panels after having discussed identity and race so much in our culture class. The indigenous placard waxed poetic about the noble savage, and how the children between the Portuguese sailors and the indigenous women were the first true Brazilians. The whole text had a tone of ownership and incorporation, while the text on the ‘African Contribution’ was written as if this group was separate, something that was done to Bahia and Salvador, not something that was incorporated into Brazil and positively diversified the culture. The text spoke about the ‘African Contribution’ as Africa transplanted, not a proud expression of Brazilianized afro-cultural production (the stance the indigenous panel seemed to take) from almost four hundred years of slavery. The museum also had a room that contained old-fashioned lighthouse equipment (I finally get how the lenses work!) and a cartography room that compared maps of the bay from different periods of time.