Christiane Wagner has been a university professor and researcher since 2007. Her career began after she got her master’s in science of communication with the highest honors from the School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA USP). She then worked as a lecturer, teacher assistant, and member of scientific advisory boards in communications design, graphic and product design, design history, and design research methodology. She had already acquired practical and theoretical knowledge by this time since her bachelor’s degree in industrial design (first-class honors 2003) from the Fine Arts University (Belas Artes) in São Paulo.

Furthermore, after her Ph.D. thesis in the science of art and aesthetics with the highest honors from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (mention très honorable/summa cum laude) and her Ph.D. thesis in design and architecture with the highest honors from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo (FAUUSP), her research focused on contemporary image analyses of concept innovation, architecture, design, arts, media, urban planning, public policy, and cultural studies. In this regard, after earning her doctorates in 2013, she has thus won the qualification for a teaching career in higher education—a professorship.

Teaching career in higher education (venia legendi)

Institute of Arts, UNICAMP

As a researcher and visiting professor of aesthetics and science of communication in the graduate and postgraduate programs, Christiane Wagner worked from 2014 to 2018 at the Institute of Arts, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), under a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship CAPES. In 2018, Wagner achieved the qualification for a teaching career in higher education—a professorship (Habilitation, venia legendi) from the Institute of Arts, UNICAMP. She has presented her research results at many international meetings and has published her research in several important international journals.

Virtual University of the State of São Paulo (UNIVESP)

Christiane Wagner is a professor in design and media studies, integrating education and research at UNIVESP since 2019. UNIVESP is a public university in the state of São Paulo designed to offer courses for the whole state. UNIVESP was founded in 2012 and is linked to the São Paulo state government’s Secretariat for Economic Development, Science, Technology, and Innovation. Its courses are offered in partnership with University of São Paulo (USP), University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Paulista State University (UNESP), and TV Cultura. Christiane Wagner’s video lessons are available on UNIVESP TV for more information.

University of São Paulo (USP)

Christiane Wagner is a research professor at the University of São Paulo (USP). She has been a research collaborator at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA USP) since 2019 and developed research projects at the Contemporary Art Museum of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP) from 2020 to 2022 (see MAC USP projects). In 2022, she presented a research project—Expanding Public Spaces: Smart City’s Empirical Research in São Paulo and Berlin—to integrate the USP Global Cities Program at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo, where it was accepted in March 2023 for development after evaluation by the university’s scientific program committee.

The Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo (IEA USP)

The Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo mission is to research and discuss–comprehensively—fundamental issues of science, technology, the arts, and other areas of knowledge, stimulating the generation of new ideas and contributing to the analysis of social issues and the development of public policies. The USP Global Cities Program at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo aims to contribute to the improvement of research and to the scientific and technological excellence of the university, as well as to enable the formation of groups of national and foreign researchers focused on urban issues, integrating networks of studies and international research. 

The Contemporary Art Museum of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP)

The Museum of Contemporary Art is one of the country’s largest art museums. It belongs to the University of São Paulo and other schools and faculties that conduct a joint activity research program in Aesthetics, Art History, and its interfaces. The most significant schools and faculties of the University of São Paulo for that research program are the School of Communications and Arts; the School of Arts, Science and Humanities; the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism; and the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Science.

As a research professor at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, Wagner’s research topics were relations between music and visual arts in the contemporaneity; heritage interpretation: museum, culture, and society, and art and education in the virtual environment.

The MAC USP’s origin

The creation of the Contemporary Art Museum of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP) goes back to 1963 with the donation of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) of São Paulo, made by Ciccillo Matarazzo (1892–1977) to the University of São Paulo (USP). The MAC USP’s origin is directly linked to the MAM SP and, therefore, to the Bienal of São Paulo (1951). The Museum of Modern Art, founded in 1949, can be seen as one of the evident signs of the desire for cultural updating of São Paulo’s elites. In a context of industrial expansion that focuses on the city’s monopolization, private patronage, especially Ciccillo Matarazzo, plays a decisive role in creating various cultural institutions in the period. Installed in an architectural complex created in the 1950s by architect Oscar Niemeyer and his team, MAC USP has a collection of about 10 thousand works, including paintings, prints, three-dimensional photographs, conceptual art, objects, and installations. It is considered a reference center of modern and contemporary art, Brazilian and international, keeping at the disposal of students, specialists, and the general public a library and an important documental archive. The collection consists, among other names, of works by Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Tarsila do Amaral, Anita Malfatti, and Lygia Clark. In the latest decades, the MAC USP continued to expand its modern and contemporary collections with the acquisition of works by Henry Moore, Cildo Meireles, Joseph Beuys, Leda Catunda, and several other Brazilian and international artists.

MAC-USP’s Building Designed by Oscar Niemeyer

MAC-USP’s building has a total area of 34 thousand m², of which more than 10 thousand m² will be dedicated only to exhibitions, which will allow the exhibition of practically all the museum’s collection. The building was designed by Oscar Niemeyer’s office and inaugurated in 1954. It is listed by the Municipal Council for the Preservation of the Historical, Cultural and Environmental Heritage of the City of São Paulo (Conpresp).

Development of São Paulo City

Here are some family memories!

Christiane Wagner’s father and grandfathers contributed to the architecture and industrial design of São Paulo among many other Germans as well as the Austrians and the Italians who came to work in Brazil during the industrial and technological development under President Kubitschek. Since the 1960s, the transformation of the São Paulo city and many other Brazilian towns is more characterized by linear time for society’s development. Ideas allied only to space do not correspond to the results expected from developing a continually growing city and its transformation and evolution. When the industrial and technological development began, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig arrived, who created the expression “Brasilien: Ein Land der Zukunft” (Brazil, country of the future), which was initially the title of his essay. Stefan Zweig was dazzled by the landscape and the rhythm of life in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and motivated the new European immigrants to develop and live in Brazil. Even now remain the expression and the expectations of this future of such a multi-cultural people.

Thus, Christiane’s father, Reinhard Rudolf Wagner, and grandfather, Rudi Gustav Fritz Wagner, worked as engineers and industrial designers for Johnson & Johnson and Siemens respectively. In addition, grandfather Miro Kugler as an engineer and architect was working on many building projects for São Paulo city! The most prominent was the project of the head office of the São Paulo State Government!

This building is the head office of the São Paulo State Government and, nowadays, is the governor’s official residence. The initial project was designed by Italian architect Marcello Piacentini. The main objective was to house the University Conde Francisco Matarazzo and the Italian Matarazzo family, for whom my grandfather and other German architects and engineers worked. The initial project presented abstract lines, and at the beginning of the work, it was redesigned to have an Italian style with neoclassical influence. Since April 19, 1964, it was named Palácio dos Bandeirantes and also became the governor’s official residence and museum. A commission was created for the acquisition of works of art that currently make up the Artistic-Cultural Collection of the Governmental Palaces in São Paulo city.

More details, photos and projects coming soon!