Buried in the New York Times’s profile of Bernardo Paz’s Inhotim art park are some impressive attendance numbers and further proof that art as a leisure attraction is growing around the globe:

Inhotim received nearly 250,000 visitors in 2011, and it expects well more this year. But Mr. Paz, who says his companies provide Inhotim with about $60 million to $70 million for operations each year, sees no need to stop there.

In order to make Inhotim self-sustaining, he said he was planning to build no fewer than 10 new hotels here for visitors, an amphitheater for 15,000 people, even a complex of “lofts” for those who want to live amid the collection. He said Inhotim, which sprawls over nearly 5,000 acres, has room for at least 2,000 more works of art.

Inhotim’s growth over the past decade has provided a jolt to the surrounding economy, with many of the adult residents of villages nearby employed as laborers by Inhotim, making them dependent on Mr. Paz’s vision of assembling a “Disneyland” for contemporary art in the state of Minas Gerais.

A Keeper of a Vast Garden of Art in the Brazilian Hills (New York Times)