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| Luiz Pagano, Tizuka Yamasaki e Ricardo Magalhães - Where is the Santos=Dumont Museum? |
Why does the world believe that the Wright brothers invented the airplane with so much scientific documentation giving the precedence to Santos=Dumont?
The answer to this question is simple – we Brazilians are not capable to producing mythology about ourselves. Therefore, the second question to ask yourself is 'where is Our Jack London?
The movement called 'the Bandeiras of São Paulo' began their search for gold and precious gems 250 years before the North Americans, generating the first major gold rush in the world, we had another enormous adventure in that sense, in Serra Pelada and nobody/or very little was reported. However, in 1903, the brilliant Jack London enchanted the world with North American audacity and daring in the book The Call of the Wild, reporting myths of an adventure with the same purposes, which does not even compare to Brazilian ones.
Ever since the term mouseion, the temple of the inspiring muses, was used for the first time in Alexandria in the 2nd century BC, a space designed to excite the minds of young people with encyclopedic knowledge, in order to consume and generate science, the whole world has known the importance of such an institution, to encourage the culture of a people, except for us here in Brazil.
In 1506, the Vatican Museums opened their doors praising popes and Christianity and here in Brazil, the sad history of museology appears with the National Museum, our first, on June 6, 1818, which exactly 200 years after its foundation, demonstrates our ineptitude in dealing with such institutions, when a mega-proportion fire destroyed part of our legacy in 2018.
Legacy and Mythification
This photo that appears at the beginning of this article, with me Professor Ricardo and film director Tizuka Yamasaki carries a very important symbology, that of 'near execution'.
As I said, in this photo we see myself, Luiz Pagano, who writes this blog, my friend Tizuka Yamazaki, director of the classic film from the 80s, Gaijin, who since that time has wanted to make a film about Santos=Dumont and never succeeded, and Professor Ricardo Magalhães, disguised as Santos=Dumont, who strugles tirelessly for the preservation and dissemination of the Father of Aviation.
The three of us form a group of “potential Jack London” with the power to mythologize Santos=Dumont, but there seems to be a strange mystical, anti-Brazilian force that prevents us from moving forward.
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| When I was 16, I met one of the most special women in my life, Dona Ada Rogato (pictured, I sit in front of the Cesna 140 she used to circumnavigate the Americas). In 1983, I wanted to work, do something interesting and I volunteered to clean planes at the old Aeronautics Museum, in Oca do Ibirapuera. |
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| In this other photo, by coincidence, the other most important woman in my life, my wife (the one in the middle) at the last party that took place at the Museum of Aeronautics, at the Flash Power Energy Drik in the late 1990s. |
If there is a man who loves and fights for Santos=Dumont, that man is my big brother, Professor Ricardo Magalhães, who, along with me, Marcos Villares, great-grandnephew of the aviator and a select group of friends, does not think twice about to dedicate time and money to the effort to keep the memory of Santos=Dumont alive and intact.
In the middle 1930s, the Museum of Ipiranga was experiencing difficulties, three years after the death of Santos=Dumont, Arnaldo Villares, Jorge Dumont Villares and his brother-in-law Ricardo Severo, donated a good sum to the museum for the creation of the Santos Dumont Room, with thousands of items that belonged to the aviator.
The collection consisted of a set of 1,670 pieces of various types, such as three-dimensional, iconographic and textual documents that belonged to the inventor or were produced in his honor. The following year, under the management of Affonso de d'Escragnole Taunay, the "Sala Santos Dumont" was created. The museum's renovation works were also carried out and financed by the Dumont family.
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| Photo of my visit to the former IV COMAR on October 19, 2016, with objects that belonged to Santos=Dumont |
The making of the exhibition furniture was custom-made at the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts of São Paulo (my great-grandmother, Giulia Maiello, says that my grandfather, Nicola Maiello, came from the Province of Caserta, in Florence, to sculpt furniture for this undertaking).
Anyway, the inauguration took place on October 23, 1936 and since then it has been very difficult to maintain the room and the aviator's memory.
At that time there was also the idea of creating a space to honor Santos Dumont in the new Ibirapuera Park, which was being conceived. Political instability in Brazil during the Vargas era postponed the project by 20 years, and it was only inaugurated on October 16, 1960, (at that time the Santos=Dumont foundation already existed, created in the 1950s) on the floors of the Pavilhão Lucas Nogueira Garcez, better known such as Oca, designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in Ibirapuera Park.
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| Photo of my visit to the former IV COMAR on October 19, 2016, with objects that belonged to Santos=Dumont |
Maintained by the Secretary of Culture of the State of São Paulo, the Museum of Aeronautics also had the support of the Ministry of Aeronautics and private companies.
The museum had its doors closed to the public in 1996 and started to host only a few private events, such as the two-year Flash Power Energy Drink party promoted by Paulinho Machline, Udo Holler and Arnaldo Waligora, which took place on March 30, 1999, the company my wife worked for at the time.
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| Internal map of the Museu da Aeronautica / Oca - The P47 Thunderbolt was at the TAM Museum (today they are in the Company's collection), the replica of the 14 Bis and Demoiselle, also at the TAM Museum, the IPT Glider and the Ypiranga at the Revoar Project |
The museum was definitively closed in the year 2000, allegedly due to the mega exhibition "Brasil+500 - Mostra do Reescobrimento", which also included the Bienal Foundation building and the Manoel da Nóbrega Pavilion and brought together works from the pre-Cabraline period to the 20th century. The OCA at Ibirapuera began to be used on a large scale for exhibitions by "maecenas" Edemar Cid Ferreira, from the "controversial" Banco Santos.
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| Internal map of the Museu da Aeronautica / Oca - The Gloster Meteor MK-8, Jahú was duly recovered and is safe in the TAM Museum collection, the PT- 19 and Muniz are in Project Revoar |
With the revocation of the concession for the space occupied by the Aeronautics Museum in the park, the Santos Dumont Foundation and the City of São Paulo transferred the entire collection to a reserved area in CEMUCAM Park, in Cotia, which was renamed Parque Santos Dumont.
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| Interior map of Museu da Aeronautica / Oca - P-47 Thunderbolt, Curtiss-Wright Corporation, “Brasil”, a 90 HP Cessna 140-A that belonged to Dona Ada Rogato, North-American T-6 Esquadrilha da Fumaça and a Waco Aircraft Company C.S.O. |
In 2002 a new museum opened in Guarulhos, and part of the collection was taken there, as seen in this year's ASAS magazine.
Transcription of the Article
The commander of BASP cel. Lima de Andrade, and the mayor of Guarulhos, Eloi Pietà, inaugurate the new museum.
Inauguration of the Guarulhos Aeronautical Museum
In one of the most popular events, the newest Brazilian aviation museum, the Aeronautical Museum of Guarulhos, was inaugurated on the morning of December 5, 2002, the result of an agreement between the São Paulo Air Base (BASP), the Santos-Dumont Foundation and the Municipality of Guarulhos (see ASAS n°10). The new museum is located in BASP itself and, in this first phase of implementation, has a hangar where a Fairchild PT-19, a Muniz M-7 biplane and the North American T-6D Texan piloted by Col. Braga na Esquadrilha da Fumaça) and a large air-conditioned exhibition hall with a snack bar and magazine shop. In this hall, in excellent exhibition conditions, protected in glass showcases, there are several pieces of great historical importance referring to Alberto Santos-Dumont, such as the nacelle of 14-Bis, the basket of the balloon Brazil (also used in the dingivels N° 1.2 and 3). parts of his clothing and used by him on the flights, original documents and other items In addition, suspended, an original Demoiselle is on display.
With the inauguration of the museum, the population of Greater São Paulo (metropolitan area) once again has a genuine historical space dedicated to aviation, something that it had been deprived of since the regrettable closure of the museum in Ibirapuera Park.
The new museum is completely open to the public, open from Wednesday to Sunday from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, with access through Gate G-3 of the São Paulo Air Force Base (BASP). The path is along Avenida Hélio Smidt, which goes to São Paulo International Airport (Cumbica), where signs inform the exit to BASP and the museum.
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Another great preserver of aircrafts is Commander Cesar Pulschen, from Projeto Revoar.
He who has already flown for Varig, Vasp, Gol, ABSA and currently operates in executive aviation. A fan of vintage aircraft, Pulschen has a PT-19 from 1942, a PA11 from 1949, a Cessna 170 from 1954 and a N3N biplane from 1940. "My pleasure is restoring and maintaining the planes in their original form. All they are in flight condition. I travel a lot to go to meetings with old planes", says the captain, who has had a house with a hangar in the Eldorado Valley since 2000.
After that, most of the collection that was at the São Paulo Air Base in 2007, in terrible conditions, as well as the part that was in CEMUCAM, library and smaller materials, which belonged to the Santos Dumont Foundation, with Brigadier Major José Vicente Cabral Checchia headed the Santos-Dumont Foundation at the time.
Professor Ricardo Magalhães, Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Santos Dumont Foundation, was responsible for transferring everything to Santos, with his own resources, which received several relics that were added to the collection of the Museu de Aeronáutica de Santos, the so-called 'Museu Aéreo da Baixada Santista ', curated by Ricardo himself, managed at the time by Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Tebicheranede, from 2007 to 2008.
Changes in aeronautics, which transformed the Santos Air Base into the Air Base Nucleus, with a consequent reduction in personnel, caused the museum to be deactivated and the collection taken back near the Ipiranga museum, the initial destination of the 1930s, in the 4th COMAR, under the administration of Lieutenant-Brigadier Marcelo Kanitz Damasceno.
There, a report by the Santos=Dumont Foundation was made with pieces from the collection, accompanied by Ricardo Magalhães, who, with the help of a team from USP, carried out the transfer.
Created on March 27, 1942, the Fourth Regional Air Command (IV COMAR), headquartered in São Paulo (SP), ended its activities in August 2017 becoming COMGAP, and with that the collection was taken to the Yatch Club of Saints.
With the arrival of the pandemic in 2020, under the administration of Brigadier Major Paulo Roberto Pertusi, part was transferred back to the São Paulo Air Base (this blog did not have access to where the other part was taken).
Some of the items from the former Aeronautics Museum, such as the Jahu seaplane, used by Commander João Ribeiro de Barros to cross the South Atlantic, guaranteed restoration promoted by the Foundation to be exhibited at the then TAM Museum, in São Carlos (city in the estate of São Paulo).
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| Luiz Pagano and Movie director Tizuka Yamasaki |
The great dream of Commander Rolim Adolfo Amaro, founder and president of TAM Linhas Aéreas, and of his brother João Francisco Amaro, the TAM Museum, inaugurated experimentally on November 11, 2006, in the district of Água Vermelha, in São Carlos, Attached to São Carlos Airport and LATAM MRO, it operated for 10 years, growing from 32 aircraft to 100 of them. Continuing the endless back-and-forth of museum closures, this one was also deactivated in January 2016 with the transfer of the TAM Museum collection to new facilities, May 12, 2018, to be built in the place where the Memorial is located Aeroespacial Brasileiro, in the city of São José dos Campos.
Today the collection is at the headquarters of Embraer and the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology (DCTA), attached to São José dos Campos Airport. The agreement was reached in the presence of the president of the Tam Museum, João Amaro, the mayor of São José dos Campos, Colonel Ozires Silva and other museum and city authorities.
Irreparable losses
It is evident that in each of these displacements, regardless of the endeavor of Ricardo, mine and the effort of our friends, much is lost. As everything is done with own resources and sometimes, without the consent and prior knowledge issued by the Brazilian Air force, the difficulty multiplies.
I hope with all my heart that one day we can have the security and pleasure of having a worthy museology system, as well as the exaltation of our myths in a way comparable to those of the north-Americans, so that we can finally tell our history with more respect, increasing the love and dedication of the Brazilian people to science and culture.
References
AERO Magazine, Inner Editora
BUENO, Eduardo - Presentismo e Presentificação do Passado: a Narrativa Jornalística da Historia na Coleção Terra Brasilis – 2010;
FAB, Força Aérea Brasileira | CPDOC». cpdoc.fgv.br.- Fundação Santos Dummont». www.santosdumont.org.br;
Folha de S.Paulo - Descobrimento: Brasil 500 Anos vai expor carta de Caminha - 03/06/1999». www1.folha.uol.com.br;
GALANTE, Alexandre (15 de maio de 2018). «Museu Asas de um Sonho será instalado em São José dos Campos (SP)». Poder Aéreo - Forças Aéreas, Indústria Aeronáutica e de Defesa;
MEMORIAL 0122A - Lucas Nogueira Garcez ZH 2014;
MUNDO Educação. - Como surgiu o avião? - Mundo Educação»;
Revista Turismo - Parque do Ibirapuera. www.revistaturismo.com.br:
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