From a short film to an institute that goes beyond borders, the history of the Arte Institute of New York is inevitably a reflection of the history and determination of its director, Ana Ventura Miranda. He was a journalist, worked at the Permanent Mission of Portugal to the United Nations, until moving to an art gallery. Today she is an art curator, producer of cultural events and artistic promoter, with a mission: to show Portugal to the United States.

He has a degree in Applied Foreign Languages and another in Media Studies, with a postgraduate degree in Art and Movement Therapy. She took acting courses, was an actress, a journalist, but above all, a Portuguese woman in Soho, New York.

All this experience and energy found an outlet in the desire to show Portugal, something that she realized was missing in New York.

“The Arte Institute was born in 2011, in New York, from the bottom of an idea that I had in my head that something was missing in New York: you didn’t see Portugal. We didn’t have a place to play a movie. When a writer came, which was very rare, but we also didn’t have a side event where we could present him. Portuguese films were a very rare thing.”

This shortage of supply found its place in the Arte Institute, at the hands of Ana Ventura Miranda. A non-profit institution, whose objective is to promote and internationalize Portuguese contemporary culture and arts, from music to fine arts, from cinema to literature. The idea was, above all, to show a contemporary Portugal, which some part of the diaspora no longer knew.

“Often, the demonstrations that there were – which are very valid – were from a Portugal that no longer exists. A very traditional Portugal. In the minds of those people, is the Portugal they know, when they left was what Portugal was.”

In New York, especially in Soho, Ana Ventura Miranda has found the catalyst for her energy, with a culture that praises and, she says, takes the projects forward, doesn’t muffle them.

“What I think the United States has, but New York has in particular, is that there is an energy that comes out of the ground in society itself and that takes us further forward. (…) That person’s talent is what matters, sometimes more than the project. It is the ability of one to generate new things. That’s why in the United States things are going at a different speed.”

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