After 25 years of faithful service, my old station wagon named “Fofão” (for “Big Cutie”) has retired into the nearby Royal Road Antique Car Museum in Bichinho here in Minas Gerais. She has driven over 270,000 kilometers (nearly 168,000 miles) entirely within Brazil, on several long and somewhat risky drives […]
Instituto Rouanet is the latest of Tiradentes’ many artistic venues. The former home of my acquaintances, Sergio (1934-2022) and Barbara Rouanet, it was renovated and transformed into a charming exhibition space in the historic center, since 2022. Appropriately, the current exhibition is from recent (2024) works of one of the […]
The Insanity Museum, in the interior of Minas Gerais, opened in 1996 as the first museum dedicated to mental health in Brazil. It is a delicate subject, handled with dignity, reflection, and without excessive tut-tutting and hand-wringing. The site, on a hill outside the medium-sized city of Barbacena, encompasses a […]
