From a look at the director’s programme for the Museum of Art São Paulo, it is clear that he has not only diversified an institution historically based around European art (recently appointing three indigenous curators-at-large) but also offered a not-so-subtle rebuke of Brazil’s rightward political lurch. While Pedrosa’s Histórias series (Histories; in which a group show sets the theme for 12 months of programming) has occasionally missed (the current Brazilian Histories has been scorned and was engulfed in a censorship row), this is outweighed by the hits, most importantly Afro-Atlantic Histories. First staged in 2018, it has since toured North America, including to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, this past April, with a stop at LACMA slated for December. Work by US artists has been added along the way, with an already tour-de-force inventory boasting contemporary and modern art, historic artefacts and archive documents tracing the traumas and legacies of slavery, as well as the culture of resilience that arose in its wake.
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Power 100
Most influential people in 2022 in the contemporary artworld
59

Adriano Pedrosa
Museum Director - Artistic director of the Museum of Art São Paulo
59 in 2022
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