Inhotim Modern Art Museum

Twenty minutes away from my host family's house a mining magnate decided to build a massive modern art museum.

It opened about six years ago and is more of a living museum than a modern art museum. Mixed in between all the modern art exhibitions is a large botanical garden with plans from the rare Mata Atlantica ecosystem, the local highlands, and select species from around the world.

My host mom had never been to the museum before and wanted to go. She just never had a good enough reason. Then I showed up and told her I would like to go. She got very excited.

We planned to go with my host sister and some neighbors the day before the July vacations ended (schools are on vacation in Brazil for the last couple of weeks of July). It also happened to be a Tuesday, which meant the museum was free.

I don't think she had ever been to an art museum before, and I was really interested to see how she would react to modern art, especially because I sometimes have trouble understanding it. (I am not claiming that I know much about art. I'm just saying this because I have been to a few art museums.)

We were going to go to the museum on Tuesday after lunch. Ten minutes after eating lunch and washing my dishes, I was ready to go. My host mom and sister hadn't showered yet. An hour and half later, they were ready to go. We arrived at the museum at 2:00.

Whenever my host dad has to wait for his wife, he says "Before you find a wife, you need to find patience. Because without the patience, the wife won't last very long." Going to the art museum with five women also requires some patience.

The works were spread out throughout the grounds with several hundred meters of lovely park-like trails between the buildings housing the different works. We would walk to a building, spend about five to ten minutes looking at the work, trying to understand it or internalize it before moving on to the next one.

I think my host mom just enjoyed the park-like scenery between the buildings.

There was an exhibit about VW Beetles, which she really liked because she also drives an old Beetle.

There was another exhibit where they have a bunch of block letters strewn about the grass, and museum visitors can write words.

I think my favorite part of the day was when some kids decided to tree a pool that was part of an exhibit as a swimming pool and all jumped it. They had a great time for 20 minutes until museum staff told them it wasn't for swimming.

I had asked my host dad if he was interested in going to the museum. He said he doesn't think modern art is art. He thought farmers don't enough credit for being artists on the land.