São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP)
Lina Bo Bardi’s suspended museum on Avenida Paulista, with its famous glass easel displays.
The Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) was founded in 1947 by the media magnate Assis Chateaubriand and the Italian critic and dealer Pietro Maria Bardi, who directed it for decades. Initially housed in Chateaubriand's newspaper offices, it assembled with remarkable speed a collection of European art that is regarded as the most important of its kind in Latin America. It is a private, non-profit museum and today holds more than 8,000 works, from antiquity to the present day.
Its landmark home on Avenida Paulista was designed by Lina Bo Bardi and inaugurated by Queen Elizabeth II on 7 November 1968. The glass-walled exhibition block is suspended from two pairs of massive concrete supports joined by beams, later painted red, leaving a covered open plaza of 74 metres beneath it known as the vão livre, which is used for markets, concerts and demonstrations. Bo Bardi also designed the crystal easels, glass panels set in concrete bases, on which paintings are shown in the open picture gallery.
The collection spans Italian, French, Spanish, Flemish and Dutch painting, alongside significant holdings of Brazilian art, Latin American, African and Asian art, textiles and photography. In 2025 the museum opened the Edifício Pietro Maria Bardi, a 14-storey building designed by METRO Arquitetos and linked to the original by an underground passage, roughly doubling its exhibition space. MASP organises its programme around annual themes, and its 2026 exhibitions are devoted to Latin American histories.
Highlights
- Lina Bo Bardi's suspended building with a 74-metre open plaza beneath
- Picture gallery with paintings shown on Bo Bardi's glass-and-concrete easels
- One of Latin America's finest collections of European painting
- Edifício Pietro Maria Bardi, a 14-storey extension opened in 2025
- Year-long programme of exhibitions on Latin American histories in 2026
