The article focuses on Brazil’s visual arts historiography from the 1990s onwards when institutions in Europe and the U.S. began to present Brazil’s art more frequently amid the growing globalization of the art system. Edge cases are highlighted to demonstrate how scholars based outside Brazil are helping to build a canon of that country’s visual arts that contrasts and surpasses the canon of Brazil’s visual arts outlined in Brazil’s collections, exhibitions, publications, and scholarly production. The image of roda (circle) in Ronald Duarte’s Nimbo/Oxalá and Ricardo Basbaum’s image/idea of “terreiro de encontros” (terrace of encounters) are proposed as Afro-Brazilian references with which to face the challenges of these historiographic crossroads.