A new and ambitious art space is emerging at the heart of Rio de Janeiro. An old house that, for over a century, housed the Santa Tereza and Anglo-Americano schools, will become a branch of the Daros Collection. This private institution is headquartered in an old brewery in Zurich, Switzerland. It maintains a contemporary art collection specialized in North American and European artists and another one that focuses on Latin American art from the last 50 years. The Daros Latin America collection is the biggest one outside the American continent, with over 1000 works of art.

It all began in the 1980s, when industrialist Alexander Schmidhiny started to collect works by post-war artists from North America and Europe like Barnett Newman, Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Cy Twombly, Joseph Beuys, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol. After his death, his brother Stephan and wife, Ruth began to add to the collection works by Latin American artists like Helio Oiticia, Kuita, Julio Le Parc, Jesús Rafael Soto, Waltercio Caldas, Lygia Clark, Mario Cravo Neto, etc.

Curator Hans-Michael Herzog was put in charge of the project and began to look for a place to house the Latin American branch. He got in touch with Cuban art historian Eugenio Valdés Figueroa, the then curator of the Havana Biennial. After a brief fling with the Cuban capital, Rio was chosen. “Rio is Rio and this is enough for anyone anywhere in the world”, says Eugenio, who is now one of the project directors in Brazil and feels totally at home in Rio. “It’s as great as Havana, but the number of artists in the city is very impressive.” 

The 1866 building was bought for R$16 million and widely renovated by award-winning architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha. The 129,171 sq. ft. two-story neoclassical building has 500 bays between windows and doors, and a lovely inner courtyard from where 32 palm trees are projected. It is building site at the moment, although sometimes it looks more like an archeological dig, exhibiting the intimacy of old walls and the irregular anatomy of centenary bricks. Soon, exhibition rooms, a documentation center, a multi-purpose auditorium, library, educational and art space, restaurant, a bar and a house to host artists in residence will be built there.

Recently, a group of renowned artists, like Vik Muniz, Antonio Dias and Iole de Freitas, presented and debated their work with a small number of guests in a series of seminars entitled “Come by the House”. They occupied the only space that is protected from the constant dust clouds, a concrete warehouse kindly nicknamed “The Daros Shed”. Simultaneously, other workshops with artists and educators gathered 24 young people, like Brazilian Ernesto Neto, Mexican Betsabée Romero, Panamenian Humberto Vélez and Cuban Tonel, for a dialogue on their internal creative processes. 

In another initiative that shows the concern to welcome different segments of the Rio de Janeiro population, Isabella Rosado Nunes, the general manager, asked six students from the Popular Photographer’s School at the Maré slum to document the house renovation. After a workshop, artist Rosangela Rennó lent them old analog cameras, from her private collection, accompanied by a priceless encouragement to look through the lenses. In addition, 40 children, also from the Maré, created a photo series, with surprising aesthetic effects, using pinhole cameras. The result of this project, called Metamorphosis of a Record, is a beautiful exhibition currently on display at the Daros Shed.

Although unfinished, the Daros is already a source of enthusiasm for the city’s artists. “The Swiss super organization is an oasis, a counterpoint to the chaos of the local institutions”, says artist Nelson Leirner. Rio de Janeiro-born artist Ernesto Neto. He was invited to take part in the Come by the House project, which enabled him to reminisce about his school days. After all, he went to the Anglo-Americano School, which was once housed in this building.