About Us

Get to Know the Institute

The Rouanet Institute is a cultural organization that celebrates and preserves the legacy of Sergio Paulo Rouanet and Barbara Freitag.
Sergio Paulo Rouanet — a diplomat, philosopher, and intellectual — was the creator of the Rouanet Law, a landmark policy for cultural incentive in Brazil.

The Barbara Freitag and Sergio Paulo Rouanet Institute, known as “Rouanet Institute,” is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting culture, knowledge, and social transformation. Inspired by the legacy of Sergio Paulo Rouanet, founder of the landmark Rouanet Law, and his partner, sociologist and educator Barbara Freitag, renowned for her contributions to sociology and education, the Institute is founded upon the values of democracy, freedom, and diversity, aligned with the Enlightenment principles that guided the couple’s life and work. Founded in Rio de Janeiro in 2020 by Sergio, Barbara, Adriana, and Luiz Paulo Rouanet, the Institute reflects their shared vision, combining Sergio’s philosophical thought with Barbara’s social and educational insights. Since its inception, the institution has navigated current challenges, such as the pandemic, while strengthening its reach through local, national, and international partnerships. Under the leadership of Adriana Rouanet, with strategic guidance from Luiz Paulo Rouanet and the support of Flávio Garcia da Rocha and Nancy Rouanet, the Institute develops cultural projects with tangible social impact. Working in collaboration with governments, businesses, and civil society, the institute transforms the intellectual legacy of Sergio and Barbara into practical initiatives that promote culture, education, and social justice, establishing itself as a space for dialogue, innovation, and inclusion in the pursuit of a more just and equitable society.

OUR FOCUS

Relevance and impact

To empower, inspire, support, contextualize, question, engage in dialogue, and listen, with the aim of creating impact and advocating for social transformation through culture.

OUR COMMITMENT

To “think and act” in culture in a representative, sustainable, and transformative way, working alongside diverse stakeholders to reach and impact a broad and varied audience. To uphold a vision of society through scalable and replicable cultural programs and initiatives, grounded in the principles of equality, diversity, empowerment, and freedom.

OUR INSPIRATION: ENLIGHTENMENT

The Enlightenment legacy, with its self-critical foundation, invites questioning and constant renewal, serving as a living, relevant model for understanding our society. Despite recent progress, racial and gender diversity remains limited across the cultural sector and creative industries, including universities, museums, companies, and public institutions, especially in leadership and decision-making roles.

Our actions are guided by neo-Enlightenment principles, which are continuously reexamined in pursuit of a more just humanity:

Equality and human empowerment
Dialogue, empathy, and tolerance
Democracy and freedom of expression
Social inclusion and diversity

With this in mind, the Institute positions itself to think and act on two fronts:

The production and dissemination of knowledge on socially and culturally relevant topics, aiming to foster dialogue and connection between the humanities, social and political sciences, and a broader, more diverse audience.

The promotion of cultural initiatives that foster social inclusion and diversity, through empowering young people via culture, supporting cultural NGOs with measurable and scalable impact methodologies, and building bridges between publicly funded cultural actors and the creative industries market.

OUR HEADQUARTERS

A cultural and educational space for exhibitions, concerts, events, and workshops. A collection of objects and furniture, accessible through in-person and virtual visits. A public library with 15,000 books, fully open to all.

SERGIO PAULO ROUANET

Sergio Paulo Rouanet served as Brazil’s National Secretary of Culture (1991–1992) and was the founder of the federal cultural incentive law known as the Rouanet Law. He spent his career as a diplomat, serving as ambassador to Denmark and the Czech Republic. He was the eighth occupant of Chair No. 13 at the Brazilian Academy of Letters, elected on April 23, 1992. He was a visiting professor in the graduate program in Sociology at the University of Brasília (UnB), taught at the Rio Branco Institute, and served as a visiting professor at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. He held a degree in Legal and Social Sciences from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), and earned postgraduate degrees in Economics from George Washington University, Political Science from Georgetown University, and Philosophy from the New School for Social Research, all in the United States. He completed his PhD in Political Science at the University of São Paulo (USP) and was the first holder of the Olavo Setúbal Chair of Art, Culture, and Science at the IEA.

BARBARA FREITAG ROUANET

Barbara Freitag Rouanet is an emeritus professor at the University of Brasília (UnB), where she taught for 30 years before retiring in 2004.
She has expertise in the field of Sociology, with an emphasis on Sociological Theory, City and Literature, focusing primarily on the following topics: cultural critique, urban culture, cities, and social and philosophical thought.
She was elected a member of the PEN Club of Brazil (2006) and the Brazilian Academy of Philosophy (2013).