Museo Municipal de Arte Moderno de Cuenca
Modern art museum in the 1876 Casa de la Temperancia, birthplace of the Cuenca Biennial.
The museum occupies the Casa de la Temperancia, a long, low adobe and whitewashed building put up in 1876 on the Plaza de San Sebastián at the western edge of Cuenca's historic centre. Conceived as a house of temperance for the treatment of alcoholism, it later served as a barracks, a prison and a shelter before the city restored it for cultural use. Its sequence of courtyards, thick walls and timber galleries was adapted into exhibition rooms while keeping the original republican-era fabric.
The Museo Municipal de Arte Moderno opened on 1 August 1981 under the painter Eudoxia Estrella, who directed it for three decades. The permanent collection began with a gift of 26 paintings by Luis Crespo Ordóñez and has grown through acquisitions and the prizes of the Bienal de Cuenca, the international art biennial founded at the museum in 1987. Galleries show Ecuadorian and Latin American painting, sculpture, printmaking and installation, and the courtyards host concerts, talks and workshops.
Highlights
- Housed in the Casa de la Temperancia of 1876
- Founding venue of the Bienal de Cuenca, created in 1987
- Collection begun with 26 paintings by Luis Crespo Ordóñez
- Courtyard galleries facing the Plaza de San Sebastián
