Paço das Artes reopens in Higienópolis after four-year struggle for new home

After a four-year search, Paço das Artes will inaugurate its new permanent home in the Nhonhô Magalhães mansion in Higienópolis, São Paulo, on January 25, 2020. The institution was evicted from its previous space at the University of São Paulo (USP) in early 2016, an event artistic director Priscila Arantes describes as traumatic. For two years, the institution operated in limbo before occupying a temporary room at MIS-SP. The move to the new 40-year-contract location was secured through persistent advocacy by the team and support from figures like Regina Ponte within the State Secretariat of Culture. The inaugural exhibition will be a solo show by Regina Silveira, featuring new site-specific works and video donations to the institution's nascent collection. Future plans include strengthening the flagship Temporada de Projetos program, launching an international artist residency, and beginning a musealization process focused on an immaterial archive of digital and time-based works. Arantes frames the new headquarters as a hard-won victory in a national context of cultural dismantling.