Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (Solar do Unhão)
Modern art museum in a colonial sugar estate on the bay, adapted by Lina Bo Bardi in the 1960s.
The Solar do Unhão is a seventeenth-century sugar estate on the shore of the Bay of All Saints, with a manor house, warehouses, a wharf and the chapel of Nossa Senhora da Conceição. The Museum of Modern Art of Bahia was founded in 1960 under the direction of the Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi and moved here in 1963 after she adapted the complex for public use. Her intervention kept the whitewashed walls and roof timbers largely intact.
The best-known element of that conversion is the free-standing spiral staircase in the manor house, built from heavy jacaranda beams using the pegged joints of Bahian ox-cart makers. Galleries occupy the old warehouses and the upper floors, and the grounds hold a sculpture park facing the water. The museum shows modern and contemporary art from Bahia and beyond, runs workshops and a cinema, and hosts the long-running Jam no MAM music session on Saturday evenings. Entry is free.
Highlights
- Lina Bo Bardi's spiral staircase of pegged jacaranda timbers
- Seventeenth-century sugar estate and chapel on the Bay of All Saints
- Sculpture park on the waterfront terraces
- Saturday Jam no MAM music sessions in the grounds
