National Museum of Fine Arts
Chile's national art museum, in a 1910 beaux-arts palace on the edge of Parque Forestal.
Founded in 1880 as the Museo Nacional de Pinturas, this is the oldest art museum in South America and holds the Chilean state collection of visual art. Its holdings run to more than three thousand works and cover colonial painting, nineteenth-century academic art, Chilean modernism and contemporary practice, alongside European and Latin American pieces. The museum sits under the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage, shares its building with the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo of the University of Chile and charges no admission.
The Palacio de Bellas Artes was built between 1905 and 1910 for the centenary of Chilean independence to a design by the French-Chilean architect Emile Jequier, who took the Petit Palais in Paris as his model. Its central hall is covered by a glass and iron roof fabricated in Belgium, and the facade combines a monumental portico with sculptural groups. The building was damaged in the 1985 and 2010 earthquakes and has been repaired and progressively restored since. The museum also programmes the Casa Museo Santa Rosa de Apoquindo in Las Condes as a second exhibition site.
Highlights
- Glass-and-iron central hall built in Belgium for the 1910 centenary
- Oldest art museum in South America, founded in 1880
- Chilean modernism, including works by Roberto Matta
- Free entry, with the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in the same building
