The Brazilian artwork collector and former mining magnate Bernardo Paz is creating a brand new museum and botanical backyard on a 311-acre website proper subsequent to Inhotim—the museum he based and opened to the general public 20 years in the past in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais. Though Paz now not performs a task in Inhotim’s management, his new challenge seems to revive its mannequin of artwork pavilions set inside a botanical panorama. The museum will probably be developed in phases, with the primary pavilions scheduled to open in September 2027.
Experiences in Brazil have cited a price of round $195m for the brand new museum. A spokesperson for the challenge tells The Artwork Newspaper that the determine was “exaggerated” however didn’t present a funds determine.
The museum will show Paz’s private assortment, estimated to quantity round 3,000 items, alongside works by established worldwide artists and a brand new technology from Brazil and elsewhere in South America.
Bernardo Paz Courtesy Bernardo Paz
The primary section will characteristic works by the American artist Michael Heizer and the Brazilian artists Anna Maria Maiolino and Sonia Gomes, with additional commissions nonetheless in growth. Works will probably be offered in devoted pavilions and open air all through the positioning, with plans for as much as 40 pavilions throughout the grounds. In scale and format, the brand new establishment carefully echoes the mannequin that made Inhotim one in every of Latin America’s best-known modern artwork establishments.
Brumadinho is positioned round a 90-minute drive from Belo Horizonte, in Minas Gerais, a state with a protracted historical past of mining. There, Paz developed Inhotim on a farm and opened it to the general public in 2006. The museum holds greater than 900 works and has 346 acres open to guests. At 311 acres, the brand new challenge will probably be nearly as giant.
“This new museum and botanical backyard is taking root and flourishing from my perception within the artistic potential of sudden encounters,” Paz says. “It’s a place for locating new relationships between artwork and a fascinating panorama, between artists and audiences that haven’t but change into acquainted, and between the communities of Brumadinho and a public from all over the world.”
The curatorial group working with Paz consists of Allan Schwartzman, Paulo Miyada and Fernanda Arruda. Schwartzman, a co-founder of Inhotim, stays Paz’s principal artwork adviser. Miyada not too long ago left São Paulo’s Instituto Tomie Ohtake after 15 years, whereas Arruda joined Paz’s challenge following practically a decade as an assistant curator at Inhotim.
Rendering of the Michael Heizer gallery PMCKM Architects
Though the establishment has not but introduced a proper title, two attainable names have circulated informally: Instituto Bernardo Paz and Museu das Árvores (or Museum of Timber). The museum will function as a nonprofit and is creating its personal governance construction, with Paz presently main and funding the challenge.
Paz stepped down as chair of Inhotim’s board in 2017, the identical 12 months a decrease courtroom convicted him of cash laundering in a case involving transfers between firms linked to him and Inhotim. A federal appeals courtroom overturned the conviction and cleared Paz of the costs in 2020. Two years later, Paz donated round 330 works from his non-public assortment, together with the land and galleries, to the nonprofit Instituto Inhotim. He has had no position in its govt or operational selections since then.
Inhotim, for its half, is specializing in sustainability by repurposing present buildings and giving higher prominence to long-term exhibitions reasonably than constructing new pavilions dedicated to particular person artists.
