Quando o Manto fala e o que o Manto diz: Museum Encounters and Reclaiming the Sacred in the Work of Glicéria Tupinambá

In September 2024, a sacred object over 300-years removed from Brazil’s Tupinambá indigenous community returned to terra brasileira. A cloak of bright-red feathers, tied with intricate knots and sealed with local beeswax, the manto Tupinambá holds deep sacred and ritual importance for Tupinambá people, their activation central to communicating with more-than-human powers. Yet, until 2024, all existing cloaks were held exclusively in museums outside of Brazil. Artist Glicéria Tupinambá has been central to efforts for repatriation of these sacred objects. This paper tells the story of her multiple museum encounters with mantos Tupinambás: visiting European museums to study colonial-era cloaks, taking up cloak weaving for museum display, and merging art and activism through video-art installations. Theorizing secular aesthetics of museums in Brazil, this paper teases out Glicéria’s striking investment in museums, her work within and against the confines of museum institutions, and the persistent museological management of sacred Tupinambá objects.