In 1968, the Italian-Brazilian Modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi unveiled “glass easels”, a radical display of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo’s collection. Resting on rectangular sheets of glass anchored in bare concrete bases, the works appeared as if they were floating in midair. On 11 December, the Brazilian museum revived the design—which was removed in the 1990s—as part of an overhaul by its artistic director Adriano Pedrosa.
The São Paulo-based company Metro produced updated versions of the easels after studying Bo Bardi’s original structures. More than 115 ancient and Modern works—including examples by Raphael and Renoir—are included in the installation. Pedrosa says that the display “breaks away from the traditional, Eurocentric and hierarchical narrative, but also from the system of art as a whole, to propose a new, non-hierarchical and non-linear narrative”.