Hartwig Art Foundation and Pivô are thrilled to announce their long-term institutional partnership, a meaningful collaboration between two organisations with a shared vision for advancing contemporary art and culture. This joint endeavour aims to nurture a living system where knowledge flows in multiple directions, finding new expressions as it crosses geographical and temporal territories and contexts, creating space for collective learning and shared cultural practices. Spearheaded by Hartwig’s Head of Global Initiatives, Diana Campbell, the partnership marks the first project in her role for the foundation.
Pivô was founded in 2012 in São Paulo as an autonomous art institution, dedicated to contemporary artistic experimentation, critical thinking, and social engagement. This year, the organisation will embark on a major undertaking—establishing a third venue, Pivô-Coaty, through an unprecedented collaboration between Salvador's municipality and civic actors that will reactivate Ladeira da Misericórdia, one of prolific landmark architect Lina Bo Bardi's most significant architectural works in Brazil, as a shared cultural resource.
Founded in 2019, Hartwig Art Foundation is dedicated to fostering and facilitating the production, presentation, mediation, preservation, and collection of contemporary art. Through artist collaborations and partnerships with a wide range of global institutions, it fosters new artistic production, critical enquiry and social engagement. Currently, Hartwig Art Foundation is developing the Hartwig Museum, a major new contemporary art museum in Amsterdam, set to open in 2028.
“The municipality of Salvador has entrusted us with this great challenge, and Pivô is deeply honoured to accept. As we breathe new life into Lina Bo Bardi’s visionary renovation of the historical Ladeira da Misercordia in the early 80s, our programmatic partnership with Hartwig Art Foundation enables a transformative moment for Salvador's cultural landscape. This collaboration will potentialize our efforts, generating dynamic exchanges that amplify local artistic expressions while strengthening the broader Brazilian art scene. Pivô's ongoing mission to reactivate landmark spaces finds perfect alignment here, demonstrating how international partnerships built on mutual respect can empower communities through cultural sites that hold profound significance. Through this shared vision, we're committed to creating meaningful connections between Salvador's rich heritage, fostering contemporary artistic dialogue.”—Fernanda Brenner, artistic director of Pivô
“Reimagining the model of collaboration, Hartwig Art Foundation and Pivô are laying the groundwork for a long-term journey with multiple partners and plural narratives across institutions and geographies. Our projects resonate in so many ways: we activate historical buildings, transforming them into spaces for contemporary artistic and communal use. In Salvador, Pivô is revitalizing Ladeira da Misericórdia; in Amsterdam South, Hartwig Art Foundation is repurposing a brutalist courthouse that will soon become the Hartwig Museum. These are two places committed to their artistic communities and ecosystems, working together to create space for a decentralized and transnational exchange of resources and inspiration.”—Beatrix Ruf, director of Hartwig Art Foundation
This meeting of two like-minded institutions stands to reimagine international cultural exchange beyond traditional frameworks by establishing networks that shift familiar patterns of resource distribution between Europe and the Global Majority. Connecting Brazil and the Netherlands with practitioners across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East through artist exchanges, commissions addressing shared urban challenges, public programming, ecologies of learning, and documentation of emerging methodologies. It also demonstrates the transformative synergy and unquestionable parallels between the reactivation of Bo Bardi’s Ladeira da Misericórdia in Salvador and Hartwig’s ongoing transformation of a brutalist former courthouse in Amsterdam into a major museum. Using architecture and urban planning as social tools and platforms for community transformation, each organisation draws inspiration from ecological processes of seed dispersal and pollination—preferring movement over fixity, possibility over preservation, and connection over collection, following a borderless trajectory of shared knowledge and cultural creation.
