Itineraries focused on art from museums on the outskirts of BH become routine at Fasano

Marble bathroom with high pressure shower, 300 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and an original Sérgio Rodrigues armchair in the decor: the combo that would seem exaggerated in many places is not surprising when talking about luxury hotels.

The Fasano chain, one of the biggest names in the sector in Brazil, took rooms like this one in October 2018 – whose daily rate costs almost R$ 3,000 – to the capital of Minas Gerais, where it now launches a series of packages in an attempt to position Belo Horizonte as a destination. tourist attraction, taking advantage of the nearby historic cities and their museums.

If on the outside there is, for example, Inhotim, one of the largest open-air contemporary art institutes in the world, inside the hotel offers room service attentive to details. The lobby is a large living room that mixes modern Brazilian furniture, with armchairs by Percival Lafer and John Graz, with vintage benches and lamps mined in Tiradentes, a historic city in Minas Gerais.

Next to it is a winter garden where breakfast is served, and which, at night, becomes Gero, Fasano’s Italian restaurant.

In it, a corten steel “wall” divides the internal and external environments. The raw material, typical of the state that produces the most steel in the country, was used by Minas Gerais artist Amilcar de Castro to make his sculptures, so the restaurant’s decoration is also a nod to the peculiarities of Minas Gerais.

Fasano in Belo Horizonte is the second largest hotel in the chain in terms of number of rooms, behind only the unit in Rio de Janeiro. There are 75 apartments, each with its own layout, plus two presidential suites on the penthouse — one of them has an outdoor pool and a private elevator that gives access to the garage. Employees inform that it is in the suites that big names of MPB usually stay.

The hotel’s public has been changing in this post-pandemic return, says Mariana Sobreira, public relations for the mining unit: the number of business guests has decreased and the number of families has increased. To accommodate this change, Fasano now offers a series of cultural and gastronomic programs in Belo Horizonte and the surrounding cities in a structured way — tours that were previously made punctually by the concierge.

And, even if some of the itineraries offered are beaten, there are also new things to explore. One of them is to visit the recently opened Boulieu museum in Ouro Preto, an institution dedicated to exhibiting baroque art from the Americas and Asia.

There are more than a thousand pieces on display, from a collection of the collectors Jacques and Maria Helena Boulieu — she, a Brazilian Catholic, and he, a French art lover.

The Bolieus collected sacred images carved in wood and silverware on their travels around the world, before donating the collection to the Archdiocese of Mariana with the intention of forming a museum from it.

There, it is worth taking a calm look at the sacred art of the Northeast between the 18th and 19th centuries, given that it is possible to notice the specific characteristics of the pieces produced in each state of the region. The saints carved in Bahia, for example, have a lot of gilding on the surfaces, while those from Maceió have less — their busts are wider, on the other hand.

The other novelties are in Inhotim, a huge museum 60 kilometers from the capital of Minas Gerais that mixes landscaping with works of art in the open air and pavilions dedicated to the main artists of the contemporary scene.

One of them is the temporary exhibition at the Mata gallery, which is now dedicated to presenting the collection of the Museu de Arte Negra, a concept created decades ago by the late painter Abdias Nascimento, but which never had its own headquarters, although it has relevant works. to understand the art of Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s.

The exhibition on display addresses the Teatro Experimental do Negro, whose purpose was to conquer space for black people in the performing arts — it is worth paying attention to a wall with only paintings of black Jesus Christ.

Inhotim’s other novelty, this one at the Praça gallery, is an exhibition of photos and a film by Isaac Julien on what it was like to be a homosexual black man in 1920s New York. The museum has focused on representations of blackness, following a current trend in the arts.

On the way through Ouro Preto, the report was hosted by Rodrigo Câmara, a set designer and designer who owns an antique store in the city. “What makes an experience?”, asks Câmara. “If you leave the same way, it’s not an experience. Experience is something that isn’t fake, that makes you come back different from the place.”