Inhotim, Brazil’s vast open-air art gallery, gets its first hotel

At the end of a sweltering January day, a tropical downpour has refreshed the evening air. Big blue butterflies swoop among the ferns. The people walking the paths of this open-air museum seem a little dazed, as if overawed by the conjunction of contemporary art and natural beauty, both on a grand scale.

Outside international art-world circles, mention of Inhotim (pronounced “in-yo-cheem”) tends to elicit puzzled looks. Founded in 2002, about 200 miles north of Rio, for the first few years of its existence it was essentially the private paradise of its creator, mining magnate and art collector Bernardo de Mello Paz. When, in 2006, the gates of the estate were thrown open to the public, the first visitors found a huge botanic garden that was also a repository of top-drawer modern art.

Today 140 hectares are open to visitors, containing some 560 artworks in 24 galleries as well as outdoors among dense tropical woodlands buzzing with wildlife. There’s a strong showing from Brazilian artists such as Cildo Meireles, Adriana Varejão and Hélio Oiticica; international names include Olafur Eliasson, Yayoi Kusama, Zhang Huan and Doug Aitken.

Inhotim’s comparative remoteness in Brazil’s interior, beside the small town of Brumadinho in Minas Gerais state, helped imbue visitors with a sense of being on an artistic adventure but also presented a logistical problem. There were no standout hotels in Brumadinho, meaning many visitors tried to tackle the whole museum in a single day — an impossible task — before making the long drive back to Belo Horizonte, the state capital.

The game-changer is Clara Arte, a hotel inside the grounds, which opened in December — at least a decade behind the original schedule. It stands in a forest clearing, its low-slung structures hugging a gentle slope with a view of wooded hills. Forty-six individual units, or bangalós, some of them perched on stilts, are laid out along paved tracks, each with an outside deck looking out into the canopy. There’s an occasional whoop of a distant train horn echoing romantically through the woods, but the sense of seclusion is palpable.

If I’d somehow imagined the hotel would be a solemnly chic “boutique” suitable only for serious art-lovers, this was not quite that. In some ways Clara Arte is an unusual creature: elegantly designed yet family-friendly; all-inclusive (you even wear the bracelet, which doubles as a room key) yet with a whiff of exclusivity.

What’s not so surprising is the artistic connection. Works of art adorn the public areas of the hotel and an informal “art talk” is held every evening in the piano bar, fuelled by champagne and big bowls of popcorn. The tiles of the indoor swimming pool were designed by Brazilian artist José Patrício, and even the children’s playroom has immersive murals by Cássio Vasconcellos. “I wanted a place that kids could enjoy as much as their parents,” confirms Taiza Krueder, owner of Clara Resorts, a small independent hotel group with two existing properties, both in the state of São Paulo. “I didn’t see why this had to be either a hip design hotel or a water park.”  

An early decision was to hire São Paulo-based designer Marina Linhares, who had done interiors at Clara’s Ibiúna hotel as well as those of Krueder’s own São Paulo home. (It helped that Linhares was already a big Inhotim fan, visiting the museum up to four times a year.) Any suggestion of a rustic jungle lodge is banished by her design for the bangalós, which channels Brazilian mid-century modernism (the curvaceous forms, the omnipresence of wood) with her usual neutral colours and natural fibres — indeed, this richly textured minimalism seems almost too sleekly urbane for the sylvan surroundings of Inhotim.    

Two further picks were Leo Paixão, Minas Gerais’ most celebrated chef, whom Krueder tapped for a culinary concept embracing both traditional mineiro cooking and modern Brazilian cuisine, and Gabriel Sodré, a talented young mineiro formerly at the helm of Michelin-starred Chispa Bistró in Madrid. Currently getting to grips with the complexities of a kitchen operation that includes a charcoal grill, a wood-fired pizza oven and a buffet offering up to 18 dishes at any one time, Sodré plans to add a gastronomic restaurant showcasing his personal brand of Japanese-Brazilian fusion.

On the first morning of my visit, earlier this month, the hotel breathes a languid, loose-limbed holiday vibe. Children frolic in the infinity pool or gather in groups around enthusiastic young monitors while their parents top up their tans. Tudo bem? (everything OK?), the universal Brazilian greeting, is the morning mantra among the guests, who pad around in flip-flops (the universal Brazilian footwear) and baggy shorts.

I wonder: are these well-to-do paulistanos here for the art, or for a stress-busting vacation at a bijou upscale resort? Krueder estimates that 75 per cent of clients are regulars at her other two properties, but trusts they’ll tear themselves away from Clara Arte’s wraparound comforts to venture into the wonderland on their doorstep. 

They’d certainly be foolish not to. From the hotel a stone path leads through the woods and into the park as it were by the back door. Guests enjoy free entry even on Mondays and Tuesdays when Inhotim is closed to the general public. Guided tours are laid on for adults and, in a tailor-made educational version, also for children.

What with restaurants and snack bars, a design store, drinking fountains at intervals along the paths and a fleet of electric buggies ferrying visitors between the galleries, Inhotim provides a complete day out, yet the entrance fee is a modest R$60 (about £8). The park has an upper limit of 5,000 visitors per day, but its great size means it almost never feels busy.

Any of the 24 galleries would be standouts even in a big-city context . . . Then there are the open-air pieces: turn a corner and you might stumble on Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Viewing machine’

Junio Cesar, a full-time guide who was born and grew up on the original hacienda, leads the way, reeling off some of Inhotim’s impressive statistics: more than 500 employees including 84 gardeners, 15km of paths, about 100 bird species, more than 4,300 varieties of plant. The 24 galleries run the gamut of architectural styles, from concrete bunker and tiled-roof farm building to photographer Miguel Rio Branco’s rusted-steel hangar evoking the grim hulk of a slave ship. 

Their contents range from installation and sculpture to video and photography, and quality is uniformly high — any of these galleries would be standouts even in a big-city context. Highlights for me include Matthew Barney’s monstrous tractor, a powerful argument against deforestation, and Claudia Andujar’s stunning photographs of Amazonian tribes. Then there are the site-specific open-air pieces: turn a corner and you might stumble on a Dan Graham plate-glass room, a concatenation of steel girders by Cildo Meireles, or the giant kaleidoscope that is Olafur Eliasson’s “Viewing machine”.

Paz had long dreamt of a hotel within the park, and in 2011 he broke ground with a design by veteran Brazilian architect Freusa Zechmeister. Though the hotel was slated to open in 2014, building work came to a halt that year. (Official statements at the time blamed the shutdown on “reassigning financial resources to other areas of Inhotim”.) In 2017 Paz was arrested for money-laundering and sentenced to nine years in jail. He would be acquitted on appeal three years later but in 2019 the collapse of an iron-ore tailings dam in nearby Brumadinho left around 270 dead, directly affecting many of the families of Inhotim workers. And then came the pandemic.  

It must have seemed the stars were misaligned for Paz and his passion project, but all has come right in the end. A new airport is due to open by 2027 in the industrial town of Betim, just a 45-minute drive away, which will surely increase footfall. Inhotim seems likely to join the colonial towns of Ouro Preto and Tiradentes as a permanent fixture on visitor routes around Minas Gerais. 

Now run as a public institute rather than a private museum and overseen by a board of trustees, the park is supported by corporate sponsorship, individual donations and membership. Paz has stepped back from the front line, ceding most of his collection to the institute but keeping part of it for a brand new space within the park, the Instituto Bernardo Paz (due to open later this year).

A discreet, mildly eccentric gentleman in his seventies who avoids talking to the press, he can be glimpsed from time to time, a bohemian figure with a mop of white hair, in the bar of the new hotel, or strolling the museum’s forest paths. By all accounts he is satisfied with what he sees. And honestly, who can blame him?

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