If you are hungry for culture, today’s tip is the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA) of Buenos Aires. The entrance is free and the museum art collection is huge. Don’t foget to take a few hours and wear comfortable shoes so you don’t get blisters on your feet. 
The MNBA is in the Recoleta’s neighborhood, near the cemetery and the Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar. However, when it was inaugurated in 1895, the headquarters of the MNBA was on the Galerías Bon Marché at Florida Street (where today are the Galerías Pacífico). With the progressive increase of its collection through purchases and donations from private collectors, the space has become inadequate and, in 1909, the museum was transferred to the Pabellón Argentino, in the Plaza San Martín.
Its current building was, in 1870, a house of pumps belonged to the Recoleta de Obras Sanitarias de la Nación. After a makeover, done by the architect Alejandro Bustillo, the building was adapted to the needs of a museum, with spacious, ordered and properly illuminated internal areas. The inauguration was on May 23, 1933. Over the years, the building went through other makeovers that have added more rooms for temporary and permanent exhibitions.
On the 2.000m² of the museum’s ground floor there are international art collections dated since Middle Ages until the twentieth century. We can see works by Picasso, Goya, Velázquez, Rodin, Monet, Degas, Manet, Modigliani, Renoir, Kandinsky, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaughin, Van Gogh, Rubens, Paul Klee, El Greco, Jackson Pollock, Marc Chagall, Gustave Courbet, among others. In this floor there is also a specialized art library with over 150,000 books.
“Le Moulin de la Galette” (1886), by Vincent Van Gogh. Oil on canvas, 61 cm x 50 cm.
A room that currently houses the permanent collection of Argentine Art of the twentieth century was inaugurated on the first floor in 1980. There you can see works of Prilidiano Pueyrredón, Ernesto of La Cárcova, Angel Della Valle, Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós, Benito Quinquela Martín, Fermin Eguía, Pablo Suárez, among others. On this floor, we can also find the Hall of Andean / Pre-Columbian Art, with sculptures, weaving products and objects of daily use dating from 1.500 BC.
“Sin pan y sin trabajo” (1894), by Ernesto de La Cárcova. Oil on canvas, 125,5 cm x 216 cm.
The museum’s hours of operation are:
- - Tuesday to Friday, from 12:30 to 20:30 hours.
- - Saturdays and Sundays, 9:30 to 20:30 hours.
For more information and to access the collection of art, visit the website of MNBA.
Where?
Av. Del Libertador, 1473 | Tel: +54 (11) 5288-9000 / 9914/ 9960
sepphora | August 6, 2009 | 4:42 pm | Recoleta
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