The celebratory approach of sporting heritage in private museums of sport clubs and in brazilian municipal public museums

Abstract

Brazilian bibliography about sports museums, institutions that preserve and communicate sporting heritage assets, is incipient, notably those works related to the field of Museology and Heritage. Consolidated information about the Brazilian scenario of sports museums and their institutions is also scarce. In view of this panorama, this investigation starts from the formal international reference on sports museums, in which the analyses addressing the relationships between sports museums and the fields of History and Tourism, that focus on the overly celebratory aspect of these museums narratives, as the result of its institutional objectives stand out. Through exploratory research, this article focuses on the Brazilian scenario of sports museums, mapping these institutions, and gathering information about them. It analyses a section composed of 15 private museums of sports clubs and 12 public municipal museums of sport. It develops a comparative analysis on the configuration of the collections and the discourse disseminated by public and private sports museums, as well as on the reasons that justify them, compared to formal bibliographic sources. It concludes that most of the analysed museums preserve and communicate collections in which the symbolic objects of victories and victors predominate, as well as present narratives that aim to celebrate sporting achievements and sport idols. It concludes that, although the different “public” and “private” configurations and their implications - notably regarding institutional financial sustainability - are relevant factors in determining the celebratory discourse of sports museums, there are other aspects to be considered, which deserve to be approached from the Museology and Heritage perspective.