The Creative District in Rio De Janeiro and the Rio Art Museum As Trading Zone

Since 2009, when Rio de Janeiro was announced as host city for the 2016 Olympic Games, many urban design projects have been proposed. In the wake of this process, building a creative cluster in the harbor area was presented as the most lasting legacy left for the city. Founded in 2013, the Rio Art Museum was presented as the showcase for the major project formulated by the municipality, but it has also been, since its opening, the target for criticism of different sectors of civil society, who saw the institution as the symbol of a process of gentrification and commodification of the area. 

Presenting itself as a key institution in the cultural agenda of Rio de Janeiro, the museum set the stage for contest between different players and created a trading zone for different meanings of city. On the one hand, its role as political agent in the urban intervention is undeniable. Sticking to the original plan, the exhibitions increasingly expanded public have served to give visibility to the region and radically changed the profile of the area. On the other hand, the museum, created in a moment of raising protests in the city, has shown a major number of exhibitions that took urban policy as a point of criticism and discussion.

Attracted by the institution, different players have been negotiating, through contemporary art, the future of the city that hosts the museum. This paper aims to discuss how the institution has incorporated discourses, dissolving contention in a same architectural image which is, nevertheless, defined by its exhibition value.