Pietro Maria Bardi

Pietro Maria Bardi (La Spezia, February 21, 1900 – São Paulo, October 1, 1999) was an Italian writer, curator and collector, mostly known for being the Founding Director of the São Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil.

[1] Bardi started his career in the 1920s as a journalist, writing about art and architecture for newspapers like Gazzetta di Genova and Corriere della Sera.

Two years later he moved to Rome and opened the Galleria di Roma, where the Second Exhibition of Rationalist Architecture was held in 1931.

In 1947 he co-founded with Assis Chateaubriand the São Paulo Museum of Art, which he directed until 1996, stirring the Brazilian artistic community with his ideas about popularizing museums by making both modern and classical art more accessible.

The substitution of traditional walls for the acrylic pedestals became a big point of debate.