Recoleta Cultural Centre
An eighteenth-century Franciscan convent converted in 1980 into a contemporary arts complex.
The complex began as the convent of the Recollect Franciscans, granted the site in 1716 and completed in 1732 to plans by the Jesuit architects Juan Krauss and Juan Wolf, with the façade and interiors by Andrés Blanqui. After independence Manuel Belgrano set up a drawing school in part of the building, and from the 1870s it served as a shelter for the destitute. Torcuato de Alvear, the city's first mayor, and the architect Juan Antonio Buschiazzo remodelled the premises in Italianate manner and added a chapel that later became an auditorium.
In 1980 the architects Clorindo Testa, Jacques Bedel and Luis Fernando Benedit converted the cloisters into an exhibition centre, inserting bold modern interventions alongside the colonial fabric. The centre now runs more than twenty galleries together with an auditorium, a microcinema, a bookshop and workshop spaces, and is run by the city government. Programming covers visual art, theatre, dance, music, film and literature, much of it drawn from open calls, and admission is free for residents of Argentina.
Highlights
- Franciscan cloisters of 1732 behind an Andrés Blanqui façade
- 1980 conversion by Clorindo Testa, Bedel and Benedit
- More than twenty galleries, plus auditorium and microcinema
- Programme built largely from public open calls to artists
