If you haven’t already heard of it, have a particular appreciation for both plants and art, and are visiting Brazil in the near future, you may want to checkout Inhotim. A 5,000 acre park in Brumadinho, SE Brazil that includes a 3,100 acre botanical garden and over 500 (with space to keep rising into the thousands) works of contemporary art (sculptures, paintings, photographs etc) installed among its landscape.
It is said to support around 1,000 employees including curators, botanists and gardeners and pull in over a quarter of a million visitors a year. Entrance fee is around £6. The art on display comes from Brazilian and international artists that includes Steve McQueen as well as Doug Aitken, whose often referenced Sonic Pavilion uses high-sensitivity microphones placed in a 633-foot hole to supply visitors with sounds of the Earth’s internal movements. What about the plants? Well it supposedly has 1400 species of palm tree as well as there being “… about 5,000 accessions, representing 181 botanical families, 953 genera, and a little more than 4,200 species of vascular plants.” It claims to have the most living species of any Brazilian botanical garden.
The owner Bernardo Paz is a mining magnate, who came 75th in Art Review’s top 100 most influential figures in contemporary art 2013. Whilst having and implementing your own vision on such a grand scale seems slightly.. extravagant, we will abstain from judgement until we have been supplied with free passes including return airfare. The sheer scale makes it hard to visualise but many have reported experiences of awe and sensory delight. Here are some exciting images to help imagine what it might be like to visit.
