During a few days in Sao Paulo, I went to several museums and about a dozen far-flung galleries. Each had something to recommend it, whether the art or exhibition on view or the architecture or physical lay-out of the space, but nothing I saw or experienced surprised or captivated me as much as what I saw at MASP. MASP, the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, is a private, nonprofit museum founded by Brazilian businessman Assis Chateaubriand in 1947. Originally located elsewhere, it moved in 1968 into a Modernist structure designed by Italian-born Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi on Avenida Paulista, a busy shopping and business thoroughfare. The museum occupies a glass-walled rectangular box that is suspended high above the street … [Read more...]
Inhotim=Paradise*
I wept from joy 3 times during my 2 1/2 days at Inhotim. The first was in the gallery that houses Canadian artist Janet Cardiff's Forty Part Motet (2001). The piece consists of 40 speakers on stands that encircle an otherwise empty, large, white-walled space. A single horizontal window cut into one wall affords views of the abundant foliage outside. From each speaker comes the voice of one of 40 singers performing the sixteenth-century choral piece Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis. Although I have experienced this work before and have always been deeply affected by the tapestry of voices raised in sacred song, the rays of light streaming through the window and the slice of Eden glimpsed just beyond made immersion in the piece even more … [Read more...]