Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP (MAC USP)
University museum of twentieth-century and contemporary art in a Niemeyer building beside Ibirapuera Park.
The Museu de Arte Contemporânea was created in 1963 when the industrialist Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho wound up the first São Paulo Museum of Modern Art and gave its holdings to the University of São Paulo. The collection now runs to some eight to ten thousand works and is among the largest surveys of twentieth-century Western art in Latin America, with paintings by Picasso, Kandinsky, Chagall, Modigliani, Tarsila do Amaral and Anita Malfatti alongside later Brazilian work by Hélio Oiticica and others. A second, smaller site remains on the university's Cidade Universitária campus.
Since 2012 the main museum has occupied the building at Avenida Pedro Álvares Cabral 1301, designed by Oscar Niemeyer and his team for the city's fourth-centenary celebrations in 1954 as the Palácio da Agricultura and used from 1959 to 2008 by the state traffic department. Protected by both the state and federal heritage bodies, it gives the museum eight floors of galleries, a sculpture terrace and a mezzanine looking over Ibirapuera Park. Long-term displays of the collection occupy the upper floors, with temporary exhibitions below.
Highlights
- Niemeyer building of 1954, formerly the Palácio da Agricultura
- Roof terrace with sculpture and views over Ibirapuera Park
- Modernist works by Picasso, Kandinsky and Tarsila do Amaral
- Free admission and free parking, open until 21:00
