BRUMADINHO.- Art collector and philanthropist Bernardo Paz today announced the creation of Museu Bernardo Paz, a project that will transform 126 hectares (311 acres) of the Minas Gerais countryside into an expansive new landscape dedicated to contemporary art, nature and community. The project is being built in phases, with a preview unveiling of the first pavilions and installations expected in September 2027.
Continuing its founder's commitment to the development of the Brumadinho region, Museu Bernardo Paz will present exceptional works by renowned international figures and by a compelling new generation of artists from Brazil and South America. The project involves the creation of more than 20 galleries and pavilions as well as commissioned outdoor installations and sculptures, all organically integrated into a striking landscape that combines a lush botanical park with the museum's forest. Other elements will include a community center at the entrance with a library and art studios dedicated to the residents of the town of Brumadinho, and a future pavilion in the park dedicated to music and dancing as essential elements of Brazilian culture and identity.
The first phase of Museu Bernardo Paz will include pavilions dedicated to the work of Michael Heizer (USA, b. 1944), Anna Maria Maiolino (Brazil, b. Italy, 1942), Sonia Gomes (Brazil, b. 1948), Pedro Moraleida (Brazil, 1977–1999), Sandra Gamarra (Peru, b. 1972) and Laura Belm (Brazil, b. 1974), as well as major large-scale sculptures and artistic environments by Frida Orupabo (Norway, b. 1986), Mario Garcia Torres (Mexico, b. 1975), Torkwase Dyson (U.S., b. 1973) and Giuseppe Penone (Italy, b. 1947). The interplay among artists of multiple generations, origins, languages and practices is a defining trait of Bernardo Paz's 3,000-work collection and of the museum’s design.
The landscape, where 15,000 trees and one million shrubs, cacti and flowering plants are being planted, is designed by Bernardo Paz, inspired by his deep friendship and long-standing collaboration with the great landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994). Conceived for an area of hills and valleys bordering the Inhotim Private Natural Heritage Reserve (RPPN Inhotim) and the Paz Environmental Protection Area (APA Paz), the landscape design favors fruit-bearing and flowering trees in dense and striking arrangements.
Bernardo Paz said: “Museu Bernardo Paz is taking root and flourishing from a belief in the creative potential of unexpected encounters. This is a place to discover new relationships between art and landscapes of different kinds, between artists and audiences that have not yet met one another, and between the community of Brumadinho and visitors from all over the world. All of this is coming together here, and all of it is for the people.”
Paulo Miyada, artistic director of Museu Bernardo Paz, said: “At a moment when there is a prevailing global sense of ever-narrowing possibilities—whether in culture, society, the environment, or politics—we hope that Museu Bernardo Paz will be a place that renews the imagination. In a landscape full of conjunctions that challenge established notions of museum and landscape, intense opportunities emerge for creation, inspiration, and transformation.”
Allan Schwartzman, chief curatorial advisor of Museu Bernardo Paz and co-founder of Inhotim, said: “Bernardo Paz opened up unprecedented possibilities for contemporary art museums when he founded Inhotim 20 years ago. With that landmark institution now established, he is moving beyond it into new experimental territory. There is a creative abundance at Museu Bernardo Paz—a distinctive and radical sense of discovery—that will be astonishing in both scope and imaginative force.”
Other members of the leadership team of Museu Bernardo Paz are Sofia Paz, vice president; Paulo Soares, director of collection and projects; Fernanda Arruda, curatorial advisor; and Arthur Castro, director of operations.
Installation of the Michael Heizer Pavilion
Installation is in progress on the pavilion dedicated to Michael Heizer (b. 1944, Berkeley, United States), a foundational figure of the Land Art movement that emerged in the United States in the late 1960s. The son of an archaeologist and grandson of a geologist, he has devoted much of his life to creating monumental sculptures directly in (or with) desert landscapes. His pavilion at Museu Bernardo Paz, dedicated to the large-scale installations Displaced Replaced Mass #3 (1993) and Negative Wall Sculpture #1 (1993), will be his first permanent installation in Latin America.
The pavilion building has been designed based on the artist’s installation specifications. With controlled lighting, the space will reveal these pieces sculpted by time as icons that require no explanation or symbolism—invitations to be in the presence of the material substance of the world, a place for the confrontation of scales that underlies the imagination of many cultures and civilizations.
Museu Bernardo Paz and Instituto Inhotim
Bernardo Paz created and financed Inhotim beginning in 2004, opening it in 2006 to international acclaim. In 2022, he donated this cultural property to the nonprofit association responsible for administering Instituto Inhotim. That institution operates as an independent organization of public interest, with its own executive leadership and programmatic autonomy, governed by a 30-member board of trustees as its highest decision-making body.
Museu Bernardo Paz reflects its founder’s desire at age 76 to foster new possibilities in landscape, art and technology. He has been investing his own resources to establish this museum as a new nonprofit organization with its own governance model.
Independent in their management, funding and programming, the two institutions share a commitment to directly benefiting the residents of Brumadinho and society at large through artistic and educational programs, employment opportunities, and economic activity generated by domestic and international tourism. With this shared horizon, the two institutions are now working together to design protocols for coexistence and collaboration that are sustainable over the long term.
