{"id":253250,"date":"2018-02-26T13:54:02","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T16:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=253250\/"},"modified":"2018-02-26T14:49:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T17:49:00","slug":"an-auction-for-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/an-auction-for-science\/","title":{"rendered":"An auction for science"},"content":{"rendered":"
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L\u00c9O RAMOS CHAVES <\/span><\/a> On the left, Natureza morta<\/em> by Aldo Bonadei; to the right, A grande cidade azulada<\/em> by Antonio Bandeira, and Fachada<\/em>, by Alfredo VolpiL\u00c9O RAMOS CHAVES <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

A donated collection of 70 pieces of art, jewelry, furniture, and ornaments will help fund genetics research in Brazil. May Nunes de Souza Rubi\u00e3o, who passed away in February at the ripe age of 94, bequeathed a portion of her estate worth about R$3 million to FAPESP on the condition it was auctioned and the proceeds placed in an endowment fund to support stem-cell research on preventing and treating degenerative diseases. The auction took place on the night of October 24, selling more than half of the items on sale and raising about R$540,000 in proceeds. The highest-selling item was a still life painted in 1970 by S\u00e3o Paulo artist Aldo Bonadei (1906\u20131984), which carried a minimum bid of R$180,000 and, after 26 bids in a bidders\u2019 duel, was purchased for R$305,000. May Rubi\u00e3o was the sole owner of the painting, which she purchased from Bonadei along with other works. The cheapest items were a silver toothpick holder, a chandelier and a carpet, selling for R$1,000 each. Among the most disputed items were an eighteenth-century silver ornament sold for R$7,500, and a bronze horse sculpture sold for R$3,300.<\/p>\n

A number of items remaining unsold were purchased by antique dealers and art galleries in the days following the auction. By early November, 57 of the 70 items had been purchased, including the most valuable article in the collection: the oil painting A grande cidade azulada<\/em> by Cear\u00e1-born painter Antonio Bandeira (1922\u20131967), which was first exhibited at the 2nd<\/sup> S\u00e3o Paulo Biennial in 1953 and was purchased for R$1.67 million. Total proceeds to date amount to a little over R$3 million.<\/p>\n

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L\u00c9O RAMOS CHAVES <\/span><\/a> Cavalo, a black-patinated bronze sculpture by Caetano FraccaroliL\u00c9O RAMOS CHAVES <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

With a number of articles still remaining to be sold, the exact amount of proceeds will likely be known only in February. The aggregate amount will determine how the funds will be invested. \u201cIdeally we would create a long-term fund, managed by FAPESP, from which only the dividends would be used toward two or three education or research grants, without drawing on the principal. But for that we would need to raise over R$5 million,\u201d says Jos\u00e9 Moraes, May Rubi\u00e3o\u2019s nephew and administrator of her estate.<\/p>\n

According to FAPESP\u2019s Chief Counsel, Gustavo M\u00f4naco, this is the first time FAPESP has received an endowment under a will. \u201cThere have been no other donations of this kind on record since the Foundation was created in 1962,\u201d says M\u00f4naco. FAPESP is funded out of the S\u00e3o Paulo State Treasury (the Constitution of 1989 requires that 1% of the state\u2019s tax revenue be allocated to the Foundation) as well as by tuition revenues and funds received from government agencies, institutions and companies under cooperation agreements. In 2016, R$1.137 billion was invested in more than 24,000 research programs.<\/p>\n

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l\u00e9o ramos chaves<\/span><\/a> A Portuguese Baroque cherubim…l\u00e9o ramos chaves<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In the US and Europe, it is not uncommon for entrepreneurs and philanthropists to help fund research through donations to universities or scientific institutions or by creating foundations managing large endowment funds. But examples of this form of private giving in Brazil are still few and far between (see<\/em> Pesquisa FAPESP,<\/em> issue No. 219<\/em><\/a>). The most prominent example endowment-wise is the Serrapilheira Institute, a nonprofit organization created this year to manage a R$350 million endowment donated by Jo\u00e3o and Branca Moreira Salles for investment in research projects across several fields of knowledge (see<\/em> Pesquisa FAPESP,<\/em> issue No. 254<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

Two bills dealing with endowment funds are currently going through Congress. One bill, which passed the Senate in September and is now pending in the House of Representatives, sets out regulations on how donations to universities are managed. Authored by Senator Ana Am\u00e9lia (of the PP-RS party), the original wording required that funds donated to public education and research institutions be managed through endowment funds\u2014such as those existing in some universities\u2014receiving endowments from alumni. The framework has since been amended under a substitute bill by Senator Armando Monteiro (PTB-PE), which provides the option for funds to be managed through foundations. The second bill took an opposite course, passing the Chamber in September and now pending in the Senate. Authored by Congresswoman Bruna Furlan (PSDB-SP), the bill regulates the endowment funds of federal universities. Under the new bill, each university will create a fund to manage assets from donations or other sources, and the money is required to be used to fund research and university extension. The option for donations to be allocated at the donor\u2019s discretion has been withdrawn.<\/p>\n

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L\u00c9O RAMOS CHAVES <\/span><\/a> …a seventeenth-century sideboard displaying articles from the collection…L\u00c9O RAMOS CHAVES <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In the previous century, it had been a tradition in Brazil to leave to public universities the estates of people who died with no heirs. A decree-act promulgated in 1945 established that vacant estates were to inure to the benefit of state governments and be invested in higher education. In S\u00e3o Paulo, the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) was the first to receive assets from vacant estates in 1957, and in 1985 was joined by the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and S\u00e3o Paulo State University (UNESP). Following a change in law in 1990, however, municipal governments became the beneficiaries of vacant estates.<\/p>\n

Donations of collections and works of art to universities are fairly common and typically go to museums and libraries. One of the best-known examples was the donation by art patrons Yolanda Penteado and Ciccillo Matarazzo of their collections to form USP\u2019s Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in 1962. Four years ago, USP opened the Brasiliana Guita & Jos\u00e9 Mindlin Library with a collection of 32,000 books\u2014largely rare works\u2014bequeathed by businessman Jos\u00e9 Mindlin (1914\u20132010).<\/p>\n

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L\u00c9O RAMOS CHAVES <\/span><\/a> …a platinum and diamond brooch and earrings…L\u00c9O RAMOS CHAVES <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

May Rubi\u00e3o worked in PR for over 40 years at Metal Leve, a company founded by Mindlin. According to her nephew, Jos\u00e9 Moraes, the entrepreneur’s example was a source of inspiration for her. \u201cMy aunt was a woman ahead of her time, who earned a degree in arts and literature and then in social science in the early years of USP. She took an interest in public relations at a time when women rarely held employment, and was among the pioneers of the field in Brazil after completing internships in Washington, London, and Paris,\u201d he says. She married Jo\u00e3o \u00c1lvares Rubi\u00e3o Neto (1915\u20132010), a lawyer born into a family of coffee growers in the municipality of Bananal, S\u00e3o Paulo; part of the furniture offered at the auction formerly belonged to his family\u2019s farm, Fazenda Resgate. The couple had no children. The idea of leaving part of her estate for stem-cell research, her nephew says, came as part of her aspiration to support leading-edge research. \u201cShe thought it a noble cause to help society overcome the burden of degenerative diseases,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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L\u00c9O RAMOS CHAVES <\/span><\/a> …and a patinated bronze sculpture by Bruno GiorgiL\u00c9O RAMOS CHAVES <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Moraes tried to persuade his aunt to make the donation in life. \u201cShe had a strong personality and was reluctant to part with a collection that had been her life\u2019s passion to assemble,\u201d he explains, noting that she had been friends with painter Antonio Bandeira when they both lived in Paris. When Rubi\u00e3o ultimately made the decision to donate her collection for stem-cell research, she sought advice from Celso Lafer, then president of FAPESP, with whom she had worked at Metal Leve\u2014the Lafers were shareholders in the company. \u201cWhen she approached me for advice I recommended FAPESP as an institution I believed could manage the funds most efficiently,\u201d says Celso Lafer. \u201cThe donation sets a good precedent and could encourage others to follow suit.\u201d According to Lafer, science, technology, and the university were an important part of May Rubi\u00e3o\u2019s life. \u201cShe studied at USP in the company of researchers such as M\u00e1rio Wagner Vieira da Cunha and Juarez Brand\u00e3o Lopes. At Metal Leve, she witnessed first-hand the creation of a pioneering technological development center and she was the sister-in-law of physicist and USP professor Abrah\u00e3o de Moraes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

May Rubi\u00e3o told FAPESP she had made it a beneficiary of her will around two and a half years ago. But Chief Counsel Gustavo M\u00f4naco believes May Rubi\u00e3o\u2019s donation may not remain the only instance of private giving to FAPESP for long. The Foundation has recently learned it will be the beneficiary of a will made by a woman with no heirs. \u201cWe don\u2019t know the details yet, but we do know her estate includes a number of properties and that she has decided to leave them to the Foundation because she believes investing in research would put her assets to use for a noble cause. This particular benefactor was unaware of and so could not have been influenced by May Rubi\u00e3o’s will,\u201d says M\u00f4naco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PR specialist left part of her estate to FAPESP to fund stem-cell research","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[234],"coauthors":[98],"class_list":["post-253250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policies-st-en","tag-finance"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253250"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=253250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}