Brazil's Inhotim Art Institute Marks 20 Years With New Exhibitions

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The Inhotim contemporary art museum and botanical garden in Brumadinho, Brazil, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The institution recorded its highest annual attendance in 2025, welcoming 365,000 visitors, and has received nearly 5 million visitors from around the world since its 2006 public opening. This milestone comes as the institution transitions beyond the direct involvement of its founder, collector Bernardo Paz.

Paz envisioned Inhotim on an unprecedented scale, featuring individual pavilions for specific artists, monumental works, and sprawling paths across 346 acres. He donated the land, galleries, and 326 artworks to Inhotim in 2022. However, he is no longer involved in its operations and announced earlier this year that he is building a new museum, the forthcoming Museu Bernardo Paz, on an adjacent plot of land that Inhotim had intended for expansion.

Allan Schwartzman, a co-founder of Inhotim and now chief curatorial adviser to the Museu Bernardo Paz, described the two projects as“two halves of a body.” He recalled that when Inhotim was taking shape before its public opening, the founders questioned whether people would travel the approximately 37 miles southeast from Belo Horizonte to visit. Schwartzman told ARTnews in a Zoom interview,“We thought maybe if a couple hundred people came a week, we would be successful. Well, now you get up to 10,000 people on a nice weekend day.”

For over a decade, Paz, a former mining magnate, funded artwork acquisitions, large-scale commissions, and the construction of individual artist pavilions. According to Schwartzman, the challenge of sustaining the institution necessitated the creation of a board in 2012 to manage decision-making, donations, and fundraising. Paz stepped down as board chair in 2017, the same year a lower court convicted him of money laundering, though an appeals court acquitted him in 2020. Five years later, he donated Inhotim, including all its art and its 140-hectare botanical garden, to the institution itself.

Inhotim currently features 19 galleries displaying over 900 works. Of these, 12 spaces are permanently dedicated to individual artists, while seven host temporary exhibitions. Notable attractions include pavilions for artists like Yayoi Kusama, Adriana Varejão, Hélio Oiticica, Doug Aitken, and Tunga. These spaces offer immersive installations and site-specific projects reflecting Inhotim's core idea of artworks deeply connected to architecture and landscape. The institution is a significant employer in the region, with nearly 70 percent of its staff residing in Brumadinho.

Regarding Inhotim's future, curator Deri Andrade told ARTnews,“Brazilian artists will always be part of our curatorial program, but we are also turning our attention to Latin America. I would say we are looking at the world as a whole, with a very diverse program.” The 20th anniversary program launched in April with three exhibitions focusing on Brazilian artists and the museum's history. A major survey of Dalton Paula,“Dupla Cura,” curated by Beatriz Lemos, explores Black memory and Afro-Brazilian spirituality through works from 1999 to the present, spanning painting, installation, photography, and video.

Outdoors, Laís Myrrha's Contraplano is a concrete structure inspired by an Oscar Niemeyer building in Belo Horizonte, engaging with Brazilian modernism and power structures in the context of Minas Gerais's mining-shaped landscape. davi de jesus do nascimento's exhibition,“Tororoma,” transforms a renovated gallery into an experience inspired by the São Francisco River. The installation includes paintings, video, carved riverboat figureheads called carrancas, and a network of roots cast from trees in his hometown of Pirapora.

The anniversary program continues on November 14 with“À Céu Aberto,” an exhibition based on archival research and Inhotim's collection, and the reopening of Janet Cardiff's The Murder of Crows.

Andrade stated that Inhotim's future will involve both new commissions and a focus on its existing collection.“The next step will be to revisit our own collection,” he said.“If you compare Inhotim with other museums, you will find that our collection is small. We have fewer than 1,000 works.” He added that this emphasis on commissions aligns with Inhotim's founding principle of inviting artists to create site-specific works. Future programs will integrate new projects with a reevaluation of the collection and permanent galleries, both structurally and curatorially.

When asked if Paz's departure affected sponsorship, Andrade responded,“On the contrary, with his departure, we began to raise money through cultural incentive laws to maintain the museum, at the municipal, state, and federal levels,” as he told ARTnews. Inhotim is now a private nonprofit that benefits from Brazil's federal Rouanet Law and Minas Gerais's state cultural incentive law, alongside donations from private individuals and foundations.

The Museu Bernardo Paz, opening next September, will include projects initially intended for Inhotim, such as a Michael Heizer commission and a major work by Anish Kapoor. Schwartzman noted that Paz, as one of the area's largest landowners, turned to another part of his portfolio directly beside Inhotim after completing his donation. Schwartzman views this as“a kind of part two in [his] thinking.” While no formal conversations have occurred between Paz and Inhotim's administration, Schwartzman envisions the two museums potentially collaborating in the future. Inhotim declined to comment on a possible future collaboration.

Júlia Rebouças, Inhotim's artistic director, wrote in an email to ARTnews that“The challenge from 2026 onward is to build a lasting Inhotim that continues to be innovative and relevant.”

We previously reported:

ArtRio's 16th edition opens in Rio de Janeiro with 76 galleries, facing political tensions from Brazil's upcoming elections despite a growing art market.

Bogotá's Artbo fair features 50 galleries and a strong focus on Latin American art, with director Jaime A. Martínez emphasizing its regional identity.

Source: ARTnews

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