When I joined the museum in the 1990s, we had 40 employees just in security.
In cleaning, there were 18. Not counting the maintenance staff – five – the purchasing managers – two – the accounting team – two – as well as treasury, reception, woodworking, and so on.
Why did these numbers stick in my memory? I doubt even my colleagues from back then remember them – and I know that for most people, they seem irrelevant. But they aren't.
The problem was as follows: 36 years ago, the budget to support that entire structure was minuscule. Furthermore, the box office did not generate any profit.
The large flow of visitors came from state and municipal schools – and they didn't pay. What came in was restricted to private schools and a few tourists, nothing more.
That's what kept everything going.
And so it went for four years, with no margin, no surplus, until Professor José Sebastião Witter began to question the way things worked – or, more precisely, if they worked at all. Deep down, there was no money for anything.
I still don't forget when he took over as director, in 1994:
“How come nobody pays to get into this museum?” he couldn't accept it.
The ticket cost only one real.
It was then that the schools started paying. The money, finally, began to come in, and we were able to sustain our structure.
In almost 40 years, there's a lot I don't remember. But I don't think dates and numbers are among them – I'm an accountant, it's my job.
I remember, for example, the day I started at the Ipiranga Museum: August 20, 1990.
In 1992, I got married. In 1994, my son was born—and, in that same year, things started to improve financially at the institution.
Besides the box office, which we now have, Professor Witter managed to secure a series of grants from places as diverse as Fapesp and Fiesp. With these projects, we bought computers, repainted, and renovated the roof.
Before that, when it rained, more water got inside the building than outside.
Up there in the tower, we spread buckets everywhere, trying to deal with the leaks. It was never enough.
Little by little, professors came to understand that the rhythm of a museum is not that of a university. There are visitors, there are exhibitions, there is a routine that doesn't fit into the academic calendar. And the budget needs to cover all of that.
I think I gradually discovered what it meant to work in an institution like this over time. When I started, I didn't know, for example, that the Museum housed a numismatic collection with over 20,000 items: Greek, Byzantine, Portuguese, and Brazilian coins.
Then came other surprises.
In the toy collection, there were objects that were too familiar to me. The Parmalat stuffed animals, with the same creatures I had already gathered for my son: elephant, panda, seal, pig, lion. The Susi doll, from Estrela, which was part of my childhood. And the tin police cars, identical to my brother's.
All I know is that I ended up convinced by the museum curator Ricardo Bogus to donate two dolls named Valentina, from Estrela, with original dresses, and a small porcelain doll that I had received from my father and kept very carefully, in the hope of one day having granddaughters. In the end, I had two. Even so, I never regretted it, as there was something irresistible about Bogus's argument.
“Claudia, do you really think your dolls will come out of your granddaughters” hands intact?"
He was right. And in doing so, I also ended up donating a stuffed bear from Lionella that I had received from my husband when we were still dating, and a porcelain soup tureen that had belonged to my mother.
I haven't seen any of these objects on display yet; they're in the collection. But I know they're well cared for, wherever they are.
When you enter a museum and see an exhibition, the pieces are only there because many people made it possible. Not just the curators who chose them or the staff who work directly with the collection, but an entire chain of work. The cleaning staff, who care for the environment and maintain the display cases; the security guards, who ensure nothing is damaged; the conservators, who dedicate themselves to each individual piece.
Things don't just happen because someone randomly selected an object and placed it on a shelf. There's the concept, the research, the conservation, the assembly, the exhibition design – and my work is also part of that.
In one of the exhibitions that is currently on display, for example, there are blenders, mixers, and many other items that you would only find in many grandmothers' homes. And, I was the one who requested the purchase. We were in the middle of the pandemic and received the news that a collector wanted to sell part of his collection.
He lived in the countryside, we went by truck to pick everything up, but before that, I spent an entire Friday registering over a hundred items in the system. If memory serves me right, 106 pieces. It was late at night, and I didn't want to stop: if I interrupted, I risked getting lost and mixing up what had already been entered.
And of course, I feel proud when I see the exhibition set up, and I identify these objects that, in some way, also passed through me.
And to think this position just fell into my lap. I say this because I took a civil service exam to be an accountant at the University of São Paulo and had been working at the rectorate for almost two years before being transferred.
Since December 12, 1988.
To get there, it took about an hour and a half by bus every day, but I didn't even mind.
It was only later, when I got a ride with a colleague to Vital Brasil Avenue – from where I was heading to Paulista and then to Ipiranga – that he didn't believe I lived in that neighborhood.
“Try for a spot at the museum,” he told me.
I didn't even know the institution was also part of USP, along with the museums of Zoology, Archeology, and Contemporary Art.
And I knew the Ipiranga Museum well and had been going to ride my bike in Independence Park since I was little, where the air was so pure it didn't even seem like the same air as in the city of São Paulo.
We also came every September 7th on school trips. We would walk with the History teacher to the museum, and the centerpiece was always the painting. Independence or Death!.
We would stand in front of it for a long time, engaged in lengthy debates about how far the painter's imagination could go. And many versions would arise from this: that D. Pedro stopped due to dysentery, because of a spoiled shrimp, or for having returned from a romantic rendezvous with the Marchioness of Santos.
In eighth grade, we also went to see the movie Independence or Death. The settings marked me in such a way that I still remember them today. Most of the scenes were filmed in Rio de Janeiro, in places like Catete Palace, Quinta da Boa Vista, and the Botanical Garden, but many people think it was all shot at the Ipiranga Museum, and they use this information to claim that D. Pedro lived in the building. This has no basis whatsoever.
Maybe people take exams for places they don't want to be and then ask for a transfer. That wasn't my case.
But there was a stroke of luck. One day, at the rectorate, they called me: there was an opening at the Ipiranga Museum and an urgent need for a replacement. The accountant there was leaving, and transferring someone from the university seemed like the quickest solution.
My boss at USP authorized it. I did the interview. The team liked me. And just like that, 36 years passed.
However, my feeling is that no two days are the same. Just in terms of systems, I work with more than four. Mercury, which organizes the financial area; Mars, related to people management; Proteos, through which protocols and documents pass; Juno, which oversees scholarships and extension projects. And, besides them, there are so many others that are not directly linked to my area, but with which, in some way, I also need to deal.
At the university, I was responsible for the accountability of contracts and agreements – a small piece of the administrative area. At the museum, I'm more of a jack-of-all-trades.
They are commitments, settlements, balance sheets, trial balances.
Aside from price records, which are shared between units. It works like this: the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism opens a bidding process to purchase paper, coffee, equipment, and then the others can join in. The procedure is the same, but the scope changes and the volume reduces the cost.
So, every day, I do this research and observe what opportunities can be taken advantage of. If someone is buying computers or tablets, I consult IT to see if those models are of interest; when I see a snack order, I check with the events department to see if it's something we can do.
And everything can enter into this flow.
In one of those purchases, I ordered 625 packs of paper towels.
Obviously, the number stayed in memory.
Sometimes I think I could tell the story of these many years of mine at the Museum through these numbers.
They are “my” numbers.
Some might think this is a cold way to talk about things, but I know what each of these figures represents in our history.
