The Curatorial Practices of Exhibiting Popular Music in Portugal at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century: An Overview

Abstract

Music museums have traditionally addressed art music through exhibitions of remarkable and unique collections of musical instruments organized according to rigorous scientific criteria. Nevertheless, striking shifts in the theory of both music studies and museum studies have presented new challenges and opportunities, leading curators to structure their narratives round the celebration of music as heritage in museum settings. Within this framework, I carried out a study with the primary aim of mapping and understanding the characteristics of exhibitions of popular music in museums in Portugal at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and with the secondary goal of contributing towards its development. This paper provides an account of one section of this research project, in particular examining the profiles and discourses of a group of curators and professionals responsible for museums through a series of interviews. I aim thereby to illustrate concepts such as tribute, locale, art, statistics, industry, chronological rationales and material culture and the way in which they are forged together by dominant narratives concerning popular music. Furthermore, I identify and discuss the underlying trends framing popular music in Portugal so as to endow the curator’s voice with power and authority whilst arguing in addition for a fresh shift in the conventional approach.