In this text, North American curator Dan Cameron asserts that it is difficult to take stock of the vast work and public role of São Paulo-based gallerist Marcantonio Vilaça. The text holds that Vilaça performed a crucial mission in forging a cohesive international culture. To satisfy his curiosity, he collected a range of works that reflected the breath of his tastes and interests. He eventually discovered that works from different contexts can have a similar sensibility. Cameron calls the gallery Vilaça opened in the Vila Madalena section of São Paulo the first “trans-Latin” gallery. The project demonstrated that Brazilian artists were forming a powerful hybrid culture. Vilaça’s critical yet sensual vision determined which artists he chose to work with: Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Cildo Meireles, Tunga, Waltércio Caldas, and Mira Schendel. The artists from the next generation with whom he worked include Vik Muniz, Leonilson, Ernesto Neto, Jac Leirner, photographer Rio Branco, Adriana Varejão, Beatriz Milhazes, Iran do Espírito Santo, Rivane Neuenschwander and José Damasceno, all of whom benefitted from Vilaça’s ability to bring their work to the international scene. In other words, Vilaça’s work evidences, in Cameron’s view, that an individual is capable of changing the direction of the “taste” that circulates internationally, thus facilitating knowledge of the thought process that underlies a collection. 

This text by North American curator Dan Cameron serves as a posthumous tribute to the memory and career of celebrated São Paulo gallerist Marcantonio Vilaça (1962–2000). It was featured in the catalogue to the show of the Coleção Marcantonio Vilaça curated by Marcia Fortes exhibited from May 3 to June 10, 2001 at the Paço Imperial in Rio de Janeiro; the show was later on exhibit at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (August 24 to October 14, 2001). The exhibition was organized around what the curator’s preface calls “modules of poetic affinities.” The Vilaça collection does not, the text argues, reflect concerns limited to Brazilian art; the local and foreign pieces in it work together to formulate multicultural readings where links and counterpoints are brought to light. Each module was named for a verse of Brazilian poetry: “education by the stone and after” featured works that center on form and material; “another vision beyond the primary” featured conceptual works; “pause to appreciate the pleasure of adornment” featured works that emphasize the decorative in painting; “among madmen, the dead, and children” featured works with a political or social bent; and “when the soul scatters before the world around us” featured individual works that formulate collective concerns.