Prudente de Moraes Museum: 60 years of history!

Prudente de Moraes Museum is located in the former residence of Prudente de Moraes, Brazil's first civilian president. Inaugurated on August 1, 1957, the Museum reports the urban evolution of the city of Piracicaba and aspects of the political and personal life of Prudente de Moraes. Its mission is to preserve and disseminate historical experience, culture and local identity, contributing both to the patrimonial safeguard and to the extroversion of the knowledge produced about its patron, the city and the occupation of that territory. The Prudente de Moraes Museum is an institution maintained by the Municipality of Piracicaba through the Cultural and Tourism Department.

One of the most important museums in the interior of São Paulo, in August of 2017, the Museum completed 60 years. Initially it worked in one of the rooms of the former house of Prudente de Moraes together with the Board of Education; gradually, it expanded its exhibitions in the rooms of the building at the same time that the Board of Education left the building for its own location. The whole collection was exposed; including the space of the auditorium was used to expose taxidermized animals, fossils and minerals. It was only in the 1990s that there was a work of reassembling the exhibitions, but it still did not allow the configuration of this space as a more specific museum about Prudente de Moraes.

With the restructuring in 2009, carried out by ACAM PORTINARI, the museological conception changes. Aimed at socio-cultural actions along with social museology, the space underwent a broad integration, valorization and requalification action plan with restructuring, restoration, recovery and expansion of the physical structure of the former residence of Prudente de Moraes. There was the adequacy of the museum space, museographic and museological requalification, conservation, documentation and collection research, preparation and implementation of the Museological Plan, the educational action service and the communication plan. In 2010 the museum began to change the management of the state government to the municipality, which was completed in 2018.

Focus on the urban transformation so that the visitor recognizes some characteristics of the place where Prudente de Moraes lived and died. Defined as a timeline, in the first part of the Museum are presented the indigenous ethnic groups before the Portuguese settlement, the official foundation of the city, slave period, arrival of immigrants, religiosity and the first urban improvements.

The second part of the Museum is about the private life, profile, school and professional training, origins and family of Prudente de Moraes. In public life the political trajectory, the image built around this politician, his role in the construction and consolidation of the Republic and the importance as a propagandist of his image and of the Republican Paulista Party (PRP) for the city, the State and the Nation are reported.

In order to promote the museum´s collection and contribute to the appreciation of local and regional culture, the Museum has a room dedicated to temporary exhibitions. Exhibits from the own collection, from local and regional artists and from partnerships with museological and cultural institutions from all over Brazil are organized.

Our Institution carries out educational and cultural actions (courses, lectures, workshops, guided tours, projects) for diverse publics, such as children, young people, the elderly, people in situations of social vulnerability, disabled people, and others.

Aware of its role as a social transformer, the Museu Prudente de Moraes begins to take the first steps towards the inclusion of the whole community. Our space has accessible ramps, bathrooms adapted for wheelchair users, people with difficulties of locomotion and ostomized, audioguide and temporary expositions accessible.

641, St. Antonio street - Piracicaba-SP - Brazil. Phone: +55 19 3422-3069. Free entrance.