By 1940, Johnson argued, Candomblé in its contemporary form was discernible. The 1930s saw a proliferation of academic studies on Candomblé by scholars like Nina Rodriguez, Edison Carneiro, and Ruth Landes. The growing literature, both scholarly and popular, helped document Candomblé but also contributed to its greater standardisation. The religion spread to new areas of Brazil during the 20th century. In São Paulo, for instance, there were virtually no Candomblé terreiros until the 1960s, reflecting the very small Afro-Brazilian population there, although this grew rapidly, to the extent that there were around 2500 terreiros in the city in the late 1980s and over 4000 by the end of the 1990s. Some practitioners became increasingly well known; the priestess Mãe Menininha do Gantois was often seen as a symbol of Brazil. She had made efforts to improve the image of her terreiro, establishing an administrative directorate to facilitate public relations in 1926. During the 20th century, various organizations emerged to represent the terreiros, notably the Bahian Federation of the Afro-Brazilian Cults, the National Institute and Supreme Sacerdotal Organ of Afro-Brazilian Culture and Tradition, and the Confeence of the Tradition and Culture of the Orixás.