Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (Museo Moderno)
The city's modern art museum in San Telmo, housed in a converted 1918 tobacco warehouse.
The Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires was created in April 1956 by the critic Rafael Squirru, who became its first director. For three decades it had no building of its own and for much of that time shared the Teatro General San Martín. In 1986 it moved to Avenida San Juan in San Telmo, into a brick warehouse put up in 1918 for the Piccardo tobacco company, whose Italianate industrial front still gives the museum its face on the street.
A long refurbishment began in 2005 with a design donated by the architect Emilio Ambasz and was carried through by the practice M/SG/S/S/S; the enlarged museum reopened in July 2018, with exhibition space raised from about 2,300 to 4,000 square metres over five levels. The collection holds roughly 11,000 works of Argentine and international modern and contemporary art, taking in abstraction, kinetic art, photography and graphic and industrial design. The museum marked its seventieth anniversary in 2026.
Highlights
- Collection of about 11,000 works of modern and contemporary art
- Converted 1918 Piccardo tobacco warehouse in San Telmo
- Seven galleries over five levels after the 2018 enlargement
- Daily public tours of the current exhibition programme at 16.00
