Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá
Panama's contemporary art museum in a 1939 Ancón building, holding some 1,200 Panamanian and Latin American works.
MAC Panamá grew out of the Instituto Panameño de Arte, founded in 1962 by a group of artists and collectors who gathered works through donation while renting exhibition space. The institute obtained a permanent home in the former Masonic temple on Calle San Blas in Ancón, a neocolonial building of 1939 erected inside what was then the Canal Zone. James C. Wright and Gustav Schay adapted it, and the museum opened under its present name in 1983.
The collection numbers roughly 1,200 works and covers painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography and, more recently, installation, with an emphasis on Panamanian artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries alongside wider Latin American holdings. Displays rotate frequently and the museum runs a programme of temporary exhibitions, talks and workshops. Commented tours are included with entry, and the building is reached on foot from the 5 de Mayo metro station by a series of walkways and bridges.
Highlights
- Collection of about 1,200 modern and contemporary Latin American works
- Housed in a neocolonial 1939 Masonic temple in Ancón
- Rotating temporary exhibitions of Panamanian and regional artists
- Guided commented tours included with admission
