Arts Professionals Eye Brazil’s New President Warily

“[Jair] Bolsonaro has said that he wants to dissolve or merge various government bodies, including the ministry of culture, and has expressed little support toward rebuilding the devastated National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, telling the Associated Press earlier this year: ‘It caught fire already. What do you want me to do?’ … Few [arts professionals] would speak about their concerns on the record, perhaps because of Bolsonaro’s apparent sympathies with authoritarianism, or the fact that government funding supports a significant part of Brazil’s cultural production.”