Letters: What Brazil’s Inhotim obscures

Re “A vision for a new era,” Column One, Aug. 28

Bernardo Paz may think that his art installations in the Brazilian countryside are transformative, but the real transformations are wrought by his mining activities in the state of Minas Gerais. Those are much less attractive.

Who were the “lovers of art and nature” the article says have praised Paz for his work? The environmentalists I know agree that Paz’s 5,000-acre art installation called Inhotim is just his attempt to provide a distraction from the environmental degradation that made him rich.

The idea that his art installations will teach the youth of today about the transformed society of tomorrow is ludicrous. What many Brazilian youth need is something to get them out of abject poverty, not a bunch of I-beams dropped into a lake of concrete.

Peter S. Tobias

Encinitas

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