Vindicated Collector Bernardo Paz is Developing a New Museum in Brazil
2Aug. 5, 2026
Multimillionaire Brazilian art collectorBernardo Paz, the founder of museum and sculpture gardenInstituto Inhotim, is developing a new museum and accompanying botanical garden that will sit directly next to Inhotim, according toreports. Paz is currently leading and funding the new, as yet unnamed museum project, which will eventually function as a nonprofit.
Like Inhotim, the new museum will also be located in Brumadinho, a city in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Built on a 311 acre plot of land, the new institution will showcase the former shipping magnate’s personal art collection, which is estimated to contain around 3,000 works by South American and international artists.
Some of the museum’s first pavilions, which will showcase art by Michael Heizer, Anna Maria Maiolino and Sonia Gomes, are scheduled to open to the public in September 2027. Paz’s curatorial team for the new institution includes Allan Schwartzman, a chief curator at Inhotim, as well as Paulo Miyada and Fernanda Arruda.
“This new museum and botanical garden is taking root and flourishing from my belief in the creative potential of unexpected encounters,” Paz told The Art Newspaper. “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.”
Paz opened the 5,000-acre Inhotim Institute, which is the largest outdoor museum in Latin America, in 2006. The collector had been building the world-class museum, which includes five miles of trails and twenty-three separate exhibition pavilions, since the 1980s. Its permanent collection includes 1,300 works by artists including Carroll Dunham, Carlos Garaicoa, Claudia Andujar and many others.
In 2017, a lower Brazilian court sentenced Paz to nine years and three months in prison for money laundering related to Inhotim. Brazil’s federal prosecutors, the Ministério Público Federal, alleged that between 2007 and 2008, Paz used $98.5 million that was supposed to go to Inhotim in order to pay off debts related to businesses within his conglomerate, Itaminas. Paz’s sister, Virgínia de Mello Paz, was also sentenced to five years in prison in connection to the same charges. In 2020, the rulings were overturned, and both siblings were cleared of all charges.