Museo de Antioquia
Art deco former town hall on Plaza Botero holding Colombian art and major Botero donations.
Founded in 1881 as the Museo de Zea, this was the first museum in the department of Antioquia and the second in Colombia. It reopened after a period of closure in the mid-twentieth century and became a private non-profit body in 1953. The institution took its present name in 1978, the year Fernando Botero, a native of Medellín, made the first of several donations of his own work. Pedro Nel Gómez, Débora Arango and other Antioquian artists are also strongly represented.
Since 2000 the museum has occupied the former Palacio Municipal, an art deco building by the Medellín practice H. M. Rodríguez e Hijos that was inaugurated in 1937 and declared a national monument in 1995. Its two interior courtyards and a broad stair serve seventeen permanent galleries covering pre-Hispanic, colonial, republican, modern and contemporary art. Twenty-three monumental bronzes given by Botero stand outside in the adjoining Plaza Botero, laid out in 2002.
Highlights
- Works donated by Fernando Botero, including paintings and drawings
- Twenty-three Botero bronzes in the adjoining Plaza Botero
- Murals and paintings by Pedro Nel Gómez and Débora Arango
- Art deco Palacio Municipal of 1937, a national monument
