Casa do Carnaval da Bahia

The old facades and four classical columns of the main hall have been preserved from the earlier structure; Casa do Carnaval da Bahia now occupies these walls. Costumes, instruments, and models of processions stand here alongside headphones and video projections. In two screening rooms, dancers show the movements of eleven carnival dances, while monitors add headwear and percussion instruments to the participants on screen. The glass wall faces the bay, and a terrace occupies the top of the building.

In the middle of the restoration, the people working on this building learned that it was no longer being prepared for the museum originally planned. Since two thousand fifteen, architects had been adapting the abandoned building from nineteen eleven for the Memorial do Frontispício de Salvador. Here, “frontispiece” meant the panorama of the city from the bay: Cidade Alta and Cidade Baixa, separated by a green slope. For such a museum, they chose a spot above the cliff, beside the upper station of the Elevador Gonçalves. The building itself forms part of the panorama it was meant to explain.

The architects preserved the old facades, the interior walls, and the four classical columns of the main hall. They almost dismantled a later annex and enclosed it in glass on the bay side; above, they made a terrace in place of the hipped roof. When the work was nearing completion, city officials decided to give the building to a different museum: Casa do Carnaval da Bahia. The panoramic windows were already finished, but the exhibition had to be conceived anew.

Gringo Cardia was invited as curator—a set designer and artist who made his living designing productions, albums, and museums. The mayor set a deadline of three months. Cardia replied that it was impossible to create a museum in that time. He knew the scale of the work and doubted whether he had the strength for it, but the condition was not changed. So Cardia agreed and assembled a team he himself compared to the Justice League.

He first invited Paulo Miguez, a professor at the Federal University of Bahia and a researcher of carnival. Miguez was to keep the historical foundation of the story in place. The producer and musician Jonga Cunha was responsible for the contemporary side of the celebration, while the historian and editor Beti Capinan was responsible for finding and processing materials. More researchers joined them, and carnival participants provided costumes and instruments. Less than half a year passed from Cardia’s invitation to the opening.

Cardia feared creating a museum where visitors silently walk past display cases. He was thinking first of teenagers: if a thirteen-year-old finds it boring here, the history of the celebration will not pass to the next generation. So the halls acquired headphones, video projections, models of processions, and authentic stage costumes. In two screening rooms, screens give participants headwear and percussion instruments, while dancers on screen show the movements of eleven carnival dances. Here, Bahia’s history has to be repeated with the body.

Casa do Carnaval da Bahia opened on February fifth, two thousand eighteen. Its late replacement can still be read in the building itself: the old structure was intended to tell the story of the city’s facade, and the glass wall still faces the bay. Behind that wall, people rehearse carnival movements—the result of an assignment the curator initially called impossible.