Besides the outside of some amazing churches, the best thing we saw in Minas was a remarkable art collection, open to the public in a kind of sculpture park format, except that it's more a collection of installation art than sculpture. In any case, it's an amazing destination, the personal vision of a Brazilian metals magnate, Bernardo Paz, called either CACI or Inhotim, depending on who you ask - Gisela, or everybody else.
If you're going to visit Inhotim, you have to really visit Inhotim. It's not a quick excursion from São Paulo. Or from Rio. If you're basing your Brazilian holiday in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais (and third largest city in Brazil), then, sure, it's a day trip. An hour and a half's drive to the small town of Brumadinho. And, after the amazing food I had in Minas, I'm certainly not going to dissuade anyone from setting up camp in Minas...
The most immediately impressive thing about Inhotim is the landscape. It's surrounded on all sides by lush, green hills, and the grounds themselves are all designed by the legendary Brazilian landscape designer, Roberto Burle Marx. The man is a genius. Probably best known by gringos for his design of the public walkways along the beaches of Rio, particularly the iconic paving stones, his gift is to turn the whole weird catalog of tropical flora into a modernist palette, creating from plants the landscape analog to the distinct sultry modernism of Brazil's great architects (Niemeyer, Mendes da Rocha, Bo Bardi).
Even if there wasn't an incredible contemporary art collection, Burle Marx' landscape would be worth the price, and distance, of admission.
What was interesting about the art of Inhotim is that most of it is not, as I mentioned, sculpture, which you would assume is the form best celebrated in a wandering landscape setting. Instead of sculpture, Inhotim peppers the landscape with architectural pavilions, each of which is built to primarily showcase whole installations. Some pavilions are in fact solely dedicated to an individual artist. It is the kind of art that you always thought was "uncollectable", something which only museums or entire municipalities could exhibit. Which it is, unless, of course, you are a metals magnate. But thanks god for metals magnates that have this kind of bright idea for their profits.
As with the churches, you were going to have to settle for exteriors and flowery description because photos aren't allowed inside the pavilions. I never quite understand these restrictions - it seems to me that, as with free downloads of music, trafficking of amateur photos of these works would only serve to advance the celebrity of the artist, to the benefit of both artist and collectors. And, more obviously, amateur photos are never, ever going to come close to simulating the experience of experiencing these works. Even really good photos (the kind I would have taken for sure...) would merely encourage gringos and brazilians alike to make the pilgrimage. But, since we weren't as fortunate as the NY Times to run into Sr. Paz on our visit and I couldn't therefore engage him in a spirited discussion, I had to come up with a clever way around the embargo. Thus, some of the highlights of Inhotim... enjoy:
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster:
Janet Cardiff:
Janine Antoni:
Doris Salcedo:
Olafur Eliasson:
Cildo Meireles:
Helio Oiticica e Neville D'Almeida:
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