The Brazilian artwork collector and former mining magnate Bernardo Paz is creating a brand new museum and botanical backyard on a 311-acre web site 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 not performs a job 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.
Studies in Brazil have cited a value 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 finances 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 part will characteristic works by the American artist Michael Heizer and the Brazilian artists Anna Maria Maiolino and Sonia Gomes, with additional commissions nonetheless in improvement. Works will probably be introduced in devoted pavilions and outside all through the location, 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 situated round a 90-minute drive from Belo Horizonte, in Minas Gerais, a state with an extended 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 virtually as giant.
“This new museum and botanical backyard is taking root and flourishing from my perception within the artistic potential of surprising 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 turn out to be acquainted, and between the communities of Brumadinho and a public from world wide.”
The curatorial staff 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 just lately 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 at the moment main and funding the challenge.
Paz stepped down as chair of Inhotim’s board in 2017, the identical yr a decrease court docket convicted him of cash laundering in a case involving transfers between firms linked to him and Inhotim. A federal appeals court docket overturned the conviction and cleared Paz of the fees in 2020. Two years later, Paz donated round 330 works from his personal assortment, together with the land and galleries, to the nonprofit Instituto Inhotim. He has had no function in its government or operational selections since then.
Inhotim, for its half, is specializing in sustainability by repurposing current buildings and giving larger prominence to long-term exhibitions moderately than constructing new pavilions dedicated to particular person artists.
