The Washington Times looks at the rise of Brazilian collectors with the success of Art Rio which opens September 13th will have 120 galleries, half of them from abroad:

“There’s been a paradigm shift. Art has become an object of desire here,” said Katia Mindlin Leite-Barbosa, president of Sotheby’sBrazil. “It’s becoming something of a marker of status, like a nice car or a fancy vacation.

“It used to be that you couldn’t even find listings for gallery exhibitions in the paper. Now there’s a whole weekly section devoted to it,” she said. “The interest is palpable.”

Though Sao Paulo, the richer, more sophisticated megalopolis to the south, has had its own international art fair for the better part of a decade, Rio had no major art market event until ArtRio got its start last year.

Its debut was a spectacular success. More than 80 galleries from across Brazil and around the world recorded sales totaling $60 million. Turnout for the four-day show was twice as high as expected, with more than 40,000 people flooding through the fair.

Art market heats up in Rio with middle-class rise (AP/Washington Times)