Casa do Pontal Folk Art Museum

About this place

The Casa do Pontal Museum is a private museum in Rio de Janeiro holding Brazil's largest collection of folk art and crafts, and is considered the country's most important museum in the field. The collection was gathered by the French-born Brazilian Jacques van de Beuque, who in 1974 bought land on the Estrada do Pontal to house it, and in 1976 showed it at Rio's Museum of Modern Art in what was then the biggest exhibition of Brazilian folk art ever held. The collection numbers some eight thousand pieces by about two hundred artists since the early twentieth century: sculptures, dolls, carvings, clay figures and moving mechanisms made of clay, wood, cloth, sand, iron, straw, wire and even breadcrumb. Among the best known are the figures of Mestre Vitalino depicting rural life and festivals, cowboys and samba school dancers. Its old site in Recreio was repeatedly flooded by rain, so in October 2021 the museum moved to a new home in Barra da Tijuca, on a 14,000-square-metre plot of which ten thousand are gardens by the Burle Marx office. The building is modern and sustainable, and it offers lively tours with music and folk poetry.