The Brazilian art collector and former mining magnate Bernardo Paz is developing a new museum and botanical garden on a 311-acre site right next to Inhotim—the museum he founded and opened to the public 20 years ago in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais. Although Paz no longer plays a role in Inhotim’s leadership, his new project appears to revive its model of art pavilions set within a botanical landscape. The museum will be developed in phases, with the first pavilions scheduled to open in September 2027.
Reports in Brazil have cited a cost of around $195m for the new museum. A spokesperson for the project tells The Art Newspaper that the figure was “exaggerated” but did not provide a budget figure.
The museum will display Paz’s personal collection, estimated to number around 3,000 pieces, alongside works by established international artists and a new generation from Brazil and elsewhere in South America.
Bernardo Paz Courtesy Bernardo Paz
The first phase will feature works by the American artist Michael Heizer and the Brazilian artists Anna Maria Maiolino and Sonia Gomes, with further commissions still in development. Works will be presented in dedicated pavilions and outdoors throughout the site, with plans for up to 40 pavilions across the grounds. In scale and format, the new institution closely echoes the model that made Inhotim one of Latin America’s best-known contemporary art institutions.
Brumadinho is located around a 90-minute drive from Belo Horizonte, in Minas Gerais, a state with a long history of mining. There, Paz developed Inhotim on a farm and opened it to the public in 2006. The museum holds more than 900 works and has 346 acres open to visitors. At 311 acres, the new project will be almost as large.
“This new museum and botanical garden is taking root and flourishing from my belief in the creative potential of unexpected encounters,” Paz says. “It is a place for discovering new relationships between art and an enchanting landscape, between artists and audiences that have not yet become acquainted, and between the communities of Brumadinho and a public from around the world.”
The curatorial team working with Paz includes Allan Schwartzman, Paulo Miyada and Fernanda Arruda. Schwartzman, a co-founder of Inhotim, remains Paz’s principal art adviser. Miyada recently left São Paulo’s Instituto Tomie Ohtake after 15 years, while Arruda joined Paz’s project following nearly a decade as an assistant curator at Inhotim.
Rendering of the Michael Heizer gallery PMCKM Architects
Although the institution has not yet announced a formal name, two possible names have circulated informally: Instituto Bernardo Paz and Museu das Árvores (or Museum of Trees). The museum will operate as a nonprofit and is developing its own governance structure, with Paz currently leading and funding the project.
Paz stepped down as chair of Inhotim’s board in 2017, the same year a lower court convicted him of money laundering in a case involving transfers between companies linked to him and Inhotim. A federal appeals court overturned the conviction and cleared Paz of the charges in 2020. Two years later, Paz donated around 330 works from his private collection, along with the land and galleries, to the nonprofit Instituto Inhotim. He has had no role in its executive or operational decisions since then.
Inhotim, for its part, is focusing on sustainability by repurposing existing buildings and giving greater prominence to long-term exhibitions rather than building new pavilions devoted to individual artists.
