The Path of Things

The “O Caminho das Coisas” (“The Path of Things”) exhibition grew out of the intersection between people and objects in a particular setting: a museum. A product of the “Encontros com o Acervo” (“Meetings with the Collection”) project – which has promoted dialogue between the Immigration Museum (Museu da Imigração) staff and former donors, community representatives, and members of partner institutions since 2011 – the exhibition depicts the experience of rediscovering the stories behind some of the pieces in our collection, by explaining how those pieces got to us. As with many institutions around the world, the Immigration Museum (Museu da Imigração) boasts a broad and varied collection. A lot is known about some pieces; very little or almost nothing about others. However, more than simply accumulating information and meanings on their collections, museums only truly fulfill their mission when they place their collections at the center of the encounter, conversation, and exchange with disparate audiences. Below we describe the practical outcomes of this assumption through three “Meetings with the Collection”: the first, with members of São Paulo’s Lithuanian community; the second, with representatives of the Historical Museum of Japanese Immigration to Brazil (Museu Histórico da Imigração Japonesa no Brasil); and the third, with a former donor. More than mere chats, the experiences serve to frame the Museum’s relationship with its collection and with all those who in any way interact with that collection. In this light, we invite you to closely observe the exhibition objects and answer the following question: what was the path traveled by these things?

How much are the objects worth? Why are they here?

The “Meetings with the Collection” provided an opportunity to record new information on the pieces selected for the exhibition. The information can be interpreted as the opening of new pathways for the Immigration Museum (Museu da Imigração), suggesting ways in which a single object can be the key to understanding any number of questions. In thinking about migration as the Museum’s central theme, we free ourselves to review on an extensive list of day-to-day objects, photographs, and text documents with which to discuss the personal memories and origins of their original owners and, in this way, paint a clearer picture of their lives and trajectories as migrants. It also enables us to think about other questions, including family and group memories; adaptation periods for migrants and their descendants in Brazil, in addition to the work that permeated their lives prior to and after migration. In short, we can think about the objects and their history as starting points for understanding the migratory process in Brazil.

The two pieces on display were documented in the Museum’s records as items of Lithuanian origin. However, the meaning of each piece was rediscovered, thanks to the Encounter with the Collection: they speak to the country’s recent history. The calendar on display dates from 1990, when Lithuania gained its independence from the former Soviet Union. The calendar also includes the colors of the national flag, which began flying again in 1990 after a long period of prohibition by the Soviet regime. The piece bears a direct relation to the miniature flag, which predates independence. It is a symbol of the pro-independence movement led by Lithuanian migrants and their descendants around the world, including Brazil. The colors have their own special meaning as well. According to one interpretation, yellow represents gold, green, the forest, and red, the blood spilled in war.

Up to the Encounter with the Collection held with the Historical Museum of Japanese Immigration to Brazil, this item had been identified as a kimono. With the help of museum representatives, the piece was confirmed to be a “Haori,” a type of jacket worn over the kimono on cold days. The exhibition piece is a male Haori without lining. Shorter than the kimono, the Haori is worn over the kimono on formal occasions, along with pants. A notable detail of the piece is a subtle circular design in five different places. The design likely represents a family crest, known as the “wheel of eight arrows".

From a Meeting with the Collection session with Mr. Egydio Torrezani, we learned the story of the tool box belonging to Mr. Luiz (Luigi) Torrezani, Mr. Torrenzani’s grandfather. Luiz was a carpenter who brought his work tool aboard the vessel Cachar. He and his tool box arrived at the Port of Santos in February 1889. As with countless other immigrants, he made a point of bringing his tool box with him as a way of ensuring he could continue pursuing his craft in his new home.

Museums can serve as a space for boundless storytelling, narrated from a variety of viewpoints. Hence, the research process never ends; each object affords us the possibility of learning more about ourselves or about the lives of other individuals, people, and places. Initially, the exhibition brought us pieces donated in earlier years, with little in the way of recorded information. These pieces present both a challenge and an opportunity to learn. In some cases, they represent objects of day-to-day life, such as a cork shaped in a manner that piques our interest: a bull’s head notable for the detail of one of its horns. In other cases, the original utility of a given object may be difficult to discern, such as the figador. As part of the process of discovery, therefore, we have decided to invite our visitors to ask and share their own questions about these objects and, in this way, offer us new ways to think about them.

Eva Maria Augusta Boeckh Haebisch was born in the 1920s in the Black Forest region of Germany. She studied medicine during the Second World War, serving as a nurse for the Red Cross. Following the War, Eva received a scholarship to John Hopkins University in the United States, then moved to Stockholm, Norway. Her life to that point had also included a bicycle trip from her hometown of Heidelberg in Germany to the Spanish city of Barcelona. In this same period between 1950 and 1955, she was employed by a clinic at the University of Heidelberg. She was then offered the opportunity to migrate to Brazil. On June 19, 1955, she arrived at the Port of Santos in São Paulo. In 1956, she married Horst Haebisch, himself a doctor, and moved to the north section of São Paulo. In 1963, Eva successfully revalidated her medical degree, whereupon she opened her own practice near the República Square in São Paulo. She also taught at the University of São Paulo, working at the Institute of Biological Sciences for many years.

A type of jacket, also known as an “anorak.” The donor acquired the garment between the years 1949 and 1950 in the city of Heidelberg, Germany, where she lived. It was a US military jacket worn by American troops housed in Eva’s city in the years following the Second World War. The jacket was dyed and split into two separate items of clothing, one of which Eva gave to a friend. She wore her part (the lining) on her trek from her hometown to Barcelona by bicycle. The donor continued to wear the jacket into the 1990s.

Book written in German with the following inscription on the cover “Ostern - Sara Grabo.” According to the donor, the poetry album belonged to Christa Radius, another German immigrant who came to Brazil in the 1950s. A passage from the diary, translated from German to Portuguese in collaboration with the Martius Staden Institute, reads as follows: “May your heart be your greatest treasure, may it cleanse you every day, may it leave you clean and beautiful, that it may be free of the dust of sin. In memory of professor Oswaldo Friedrich.” (Free translation)