MUSEO DE ARTE LATINOAMERICANO DE BUENOS AIRES

You will spot it from afar: with its eccentric architecture, the MALBA is unbreakable. Designed by Córdoba architects Atelman, Fourcade and Tapia and inaugurated in 2001, the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires is designed in a deconstructivist style, fashionable in the 1990s. One discovers a juxtaposition of cubic volumes with irregular lines, and large bay windows on the façade that give a lot of light to the building. The founder and director of the museum is businessman and real estate developer Eduardo Costantini, who gave his name to the museum's collection. This Argentinian, born in 1946 in Buenos Aires, is notably at the origin of the Nordelta project (located a few kilometres from Tigre) and numerous real estate projects throughout the world. When he opened MALBA, he donated more than 220 works of Latin American art and his museum was recognized as the best cultural entity of the last decade in 2008. In 2016, the famous collector continues his madness by purchasing the famous painting Baile de Tehuantepec by Mexican painter Diego Rivera for $15,750,000. A record price. The Fundación Costantini presents a permanent exhibition and has nearly 400 works by 160 artists, including some by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Joaquín Torres Garcia and Antonio Berni, but also by many other renowned Latin American artists, such as Pedro Figari, Tarsila do Amaral, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, Emilio Pettoruti, Alejandro Xul Solar, Guillermo Kuitca and José Bedia Valdés. You will find all kinds of works on display: paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs... and all kinds of artists: from the modernists and avant-gardists of the 1920s, to the surrealists of the 1930s and 1940s, abstract and concrete trends and finally contemporary art with the new figuration, pop art, conceptualism and minimalism. Only part of the permanent collection is shown, but it is renewed regularly. The museum also offers temporary exhibitions. In January 2018, there was an exhibition on modern, avant-garde Mexican art, featuring works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. It is unfortunate that the exhibition space is so small given the richness of the collection. Also worth noting is the presence of a rich film library, a section dedicated to literature and a pleasant cafeteria.