Latin American Contemporary Art Museum

The M.A.C.L.A. – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Latinoamericano ( Latin American Contemporary Art Museum) opened on September 10th, 1999 in a narrow street called Pasaje Dardo Rocha, the same place where the Municipal Museum of Art is located. The two buildings are on the same block surrounded by 6th, 7th, 49th and 50th Streets, in the heart of the city, and they are located next to the Government House and the House of Representatives which surround San Martín Square.

The need to have a space to combine all the accurate forms of artistic Latin American production came up in 1978, during the first Latin American Meeting of Art Critics and Plastic Artists.

During the course of the display Confluencias, held in 1994 in Spain by professor and plastic artist Cesar López Osornio, the dream of having a city museum began to take shape. The artists that participated in the display, all of them Latin American residing in Europe because of voluntary or forced exile, decided to donate their masterpieces to López Osornio’s project, who was named the first General Director of the new museum.

As the name suggests, it was necessary to display contemporary art there and this has been the ruling idea until today. From the beginning, the heritage of the museum has been extremely versatile with masterpieces donated by the artists themselves.

Since the 1950s until today, the museum has housed in its wings various tendencies and avant-garde trends that are part of our daily life today and objects that we buy every day.


Brother of the Municipal Museum of Art

The same way as its brother, the Municipal Museum of Art in La Plata, the Museum of Contemporary Art is located on a narrow street called Pasaje Dardo Rocha that once had the train station which was later moved to Street 1 and 44.

The M.A.C.L.A. can be accessed from Street 50 and is open on the ground floor of Pasaje Dardo Rocha. Its main hall leads to five huge rooms that make up the museum with more than five hundred works of art.

According to López Osornio, the creator of the museum, the M.A.C.L.A. should always value the vision of artists on international guidelines set by the world market. This is something that visitors come to appreciate when walking around it and looking at the variety of masterpieces that make up the permanent displays.

Since 2001, the art gallery of the Museum, as it is widely known, has been open in the same Pasaje Dardo Rocha. The heritage of the Museum of Contemporary Art that is not on display is stored there. It has mobile structures of iron to allow moving the masterpieces in a safe way and it has an automatic system of regulating the temperature and natural conditions for their best preservation.

The M.A.C.L.A. is a must for those who are visiting the city of La Plata and even more so for those who belong or want to be part of the art world. The same way as La Plata, city of diagonal avenues, the M.A.C.L.A. holds in its interior countless masterpieces to enjoy while you are lost in the art world. It is just up to us which way we want to take.