Lima Art Museum (MALI)
Three thousand years of Peruvian art in the 1872 Palacio de la Exposición, beside its park.
The Lima Art Museum is a private, non-profit museum whose permanent collection covers about three thousand years of art produced in the territory of Peru, from pre-Columbian ceramics and textiles through viceregal painting and republican portraiture to modern and contemporary work, photography and design. Its collection galleries, presented as MALI Colecciones, are shown alongside a changing programme of temporary exhibitions. The museum also runs a large art school, a library and an active programme of talks and film screenings.
It occupies the Palacio de la Exposición, an Italianate pavilion designed by the architect Antonio Leonardi and completed in 1872 for an international exhibition held in Lima. The building later served other uses before the newly formed Patronato de las Artes obtained it and opened the museum in 1961. A long refurbishment campaign from 2010 onwards restored the fabric and reorganised the galleries, and the surrounding Parque de la Exposición remains a public park in the centre of the city.
Highlights
- MALI Colecciones, a chronological survey of art made in Peru
- Italianate Palacio de la Exposición built for the 1872 exhibition
- Strong holdings of viceregal painting and twentieth-century photography
- Art school, library and public programme in the same building
