Inhotim
This is an example of one of Ernesto Neto's pieces at the great and wonderful Inhotim. Inhotim is an "art zoo" as I described it when I first saw it. It is a beautifully kept property which is home to all types of art. As opposed to a museum which is usually constructed to house different exhibits, each building in Inhotim was contructed to house a specific piece or collection. Inhotim is not easy to find but is quite unexpected when compared to its surrounding area and definitely one of my absolute favorite places we visited while in Brazil. - Rachel

Museu de Arte Moderna
A modernist structure with no columns inside to support the structure, the Museu de Arte Moderna makes an excellent space for showing artwork in a non-obstructed setting. This building is supported by a concrete skeleton which is located outside of the building. Another notable characteristic of this building is that it doesn't obstruct the view or take up public space by being flat on the ground. Instead, this building is suspended above the ground allowing it to be used as public space.

I really connected with the piece shown above which is thousands of little plots of grass which converge into a whole and seem to engulf the floor. The piece was very successful as a site-specific piece as it incorporated the architecture of the building into its meaning. Some of the grass bled through outside of the glass walls, again playing with this definition of inside and outside. - Rachel

School of Visual Arts
One of the most beautiful places on the whole trip, The School of Visual Arts located in Rio has seen many prominent artists pass through its doors. Originally built to be the home for a prominent coffee barron in order to win over an italian opera singer, the italian villa-style home is now a well known art school complete with a cafe and an unreal landscape.

Although quite beautiful, it was hard to imagine that people had once inhabited the building- the stone walls and floors gave the building a quite cold feeling. Located right near the serene Botanical Gardens, this seemed like a great place to focus on art and creativity without any distractions. - Rachel

O Instituto Tomie Ohtake
This is a view from the bottom floor of the Tomie Ohtake institute which exhibited prominent artists from the 1980's and 1990's. Some highlights of the work we saw was an early piece by Ernesto Neto, some of Adriana Varejao's more shocking meat-flesh peices and some work of Leonilson.

Although the exhibit was relatively small and limited to the first floor of the three-floor museum, I wanted to mention it because it was a bonus to see Leonilson's work in person. I think his work is quite successful in that it is so simple yet can be so moving and emotional. He is one of my favorite brazilian artists and the moral of the story is you must visit more than just the obvious museums to see great works of art! - Rachel

FortesVilaça
The Galeria Fortes Vilaça is a contemporary gallery in São Paulo. While we were there, it was showing work by the Brasilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander. This photo shows a piece in which she created a kind of crossword puzzle environment evoking the style of the hand-painted signs that are quite common in Brasil. I especially liked the way that Neuenschwander was able to take an otherwise overlooked aspect of human creativity and give it a place in the art world. Furthermore, by only slightly manipulating this work and placing it in a new environment the gallery she was able to create new layers of meaning that transcend the simple images. -Esther

MAC
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) at Niteroi is an amazing building designed by none other than Niemeyer. It was finished in 1995, and like his other buildings, emphasizes the curve and stands as a feat of engineering. When we visited MAC, it was showing two artists: Mariana Manhães, whose work consisted of robots whose random movements and strange noises were accompanied by a small video monitor showing pitchers of liquid filling up and draining; and Paulo Roberto Leal, whose simple yet elegant work was a welcome contrast to the robotic noises. Leal?s work included a number of kinetic pieces in which the viewer was welcome to participate and manipulate the art, and I enjoyed having the chance to create alongside the artist. -Esther

SESI
The exhibition showing in the gallery of the SESI building (a worker?s union organization) while we were there was from the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (The Museum of Solidarity) in Chile, a museum dedicated to Chilean freedom. All of the pieces in this exhibition were bequeathed to the country of Chile by their creators as a way of standing in solidarity with Chile in its struggle for democracy during and after the military dictatorship. We saw a number of works by very famous artists, some of my personal favorites being those of the Venezuelan Kinetic artists Carlos Cruz-Diez and Rafael Soto and a painting of Chilean artist Roberto Matta. -Esther