‘Ideas in motion’: José Augusto Garcez and the reinvention of folklore in the Museu Sergipano de Arte e Tradição (1948)

Abstract This paper analyzes the trajectory of the Sergipean collector José Augusto Garcez (1918-1992) and his transits in the reinvention of folklore through museological exhibitions, with special emphasis on the creation of the Museu Sergipano de Arte e Tradição (1948), in Aracaju, Sergipe. The objective is to understand the transformations of folklore, especially in Sergipe, through analyzing the makeup of a field of symbolic production as well as the intellectual transits and strategies of the agents responsible for mobilizing belief in certain inventions of the “popular” translated into museological exhibitions. Based on the theoretical-methodological reference of Pierre Bourdieu and analysis of a set of unpublished sources, this research contributes to the visualization of the tactics used to create museums dedicated to folklore in the northeast of the country in the early twentieth century, and how these spaces contributed to the mobilization and consolidation of certain intellectual projects.