Helena Antipoff Foundation

The Helena Antipoff Foundation, an institution belonging to the government of the State of Minas Gerais, has its origins in the history of Fazenda do Rosário (Rosário Farm), a rural property acquired by the Pestalozzi Society of Minas Gerais in 1940 with the purpose of establishinng an elementary school for exceptional and at social risk children, with activities of professionalization in rural areas. At the Farm, several educational institutions were installed, with the support of public authorities, between the years 1940 and 1970, including the Escola Dom Silvério, offering primary education to students coming from the Pestalozzi Society and the surrounding region; refresher and improvement courses for rural teachers and for special education, starting in 1948; Normal Regional Rural School, in 1949; Instituto Superior de Educação Rural (Higher Learning Institute for Rural Education – ISER), with the support of the Ministry of Education, in 1955. In 1970, ISER was transformed into the State Foundation for Rural Education (FEER), an institution that in 1978 became the Helena Antipoff Foundation.

The Helena Antipoff Foundation underwent several restructurings and expanded its activities in teacher training for basic education with the creation of the Instituto Superior de Educação Anísio Teixeira (Anísio Teixeira Higher Education Institute), in 2001, incorporated into the State University of Minas Gerais in 2013.

Currently it also houses the Helena Antipoff Museum, where Helena Antipoff’s rooms and personal library are preserved (she lived at Fazenda do Rosário between 1955 and 1974, directing the Rosário educational complex). Also part of the Museum are the archival, bibliographic and three-dimensional collections built from the activities of Helena Antipoff and the institutions that make up the Foundation; a Permanent Exhibition on the history of Helena Antipoff and the various institutions started by her; a Research Room, to welcome researchers interested in the collection; and a Section of the Helena Antipoff Documentation and Research Center (CDPHA), articulated to the Foundation through an Academic and Scientific Cooperation Agreement signed in 1999 between the three institutions: CDPHA, the Helena Antipoff Foundation and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG ), with the support of the Minas Gerais State Department of Education. As provided for in the Cooperation Agreement, professors and technicians linked to UFMG (Faculty of Education, Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences, School of Library Science, School of Fine Arts, Central Library and Center for the Conservation of Mobile Cultural Goods – CECOR) provide technical advice to the Helena Antipoff Museum when requested.

The archival, bibliographic and documentary collection, in process of organization, is available for access by interested researchers. The team responsible for the Helena Antipoff Museum is coordinated by Miriam Aparecida de Brito Nonato (Pedagogue, Specialist in Higher Education Methodology) and Cleuza Glória de Fátima Amorim Oliveira (License in Letters, Specialist in Literacy), who together with Maria Alice Lopes Braga, Simone Batista Pedro (responsible for the conservation and preservation of the collection) and Marilene Oliveira Almeida (university professor at the Guignard Fine Arts School/State University of Minas Gerais, plastic artist,  museologist and PhD in Education) collaborate to spread the antipoffian legacy.

The list of publications from Helena Antipoff’s personal library can be accessed at the following link. Contact and scheduling of visits to the Museum can be made by phone + 55.31.3521-9531 and by e-mail museul@fha.mg.gov.br.