Museu de Arte da Pampulha

The building where the Pampulha Art Museum works, a part of the Belo Horizonte Municipal Cultural Foundation, was designed to be a casino in the early 1940s, under the administration of the mayor Juscelino Kubitschek, the building that houses the Museum of Arte de Pampulha was the first Oscar Niemeyer project for the Pampulha Architectural Ensemble. The set is also formed by the Church of San Francisco, House of the Ball, Yacht Tennis Club, House of Juscelino Kubitschek and by a hotel not built. His conception was influenced by the functionalist principles of Le Corbusier, especially the composition of the façade. However, its interior creatively interprets the essential elements of the Baroque Minas Gerais through the composition of free and scenographic spaces, the use of illusory perspectives on the mirrored walls and the game of curves and ramps. It is also a successful combination of the rigor of the form and the sophistication of the coatings. The gardens that surround the building were created by Roberto Burle Marx, whose main characteristic is the composition of shapes and colors with the use of plants of the Brazilian flora.

With the ban on gambling in Brazil in 1946, the Casino building hibernated for about ten years. In 1957 was created the Museum of Art, within a national policy stimulated by Assis Chateaubriand. The first donations of works that make up the collection of the Museum date from that time. Highlights include works by Alberto da Veiga Guignard, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, Ivan Serpa, Tomie Ohtake, Franz Weissman and Amilcar de Castro, as well as a significant collection of Brazilian engraving, with an emphasis on the production of Oswaldo Goeldi. Another part of the collection comes from the awards of the Salons of Art, which had great repercussion and influence in the 1960s and 1970s. The collection of about 1500 works is shown to the public periodically in exhibitions produced for several spaces in Brazil.

Since 2001, MAP has adopted a new curatorial model focused on contemporary production, with emphasis on works in sculptures, installations, performances and videos that establish a dialogue with the architectural and landscape patrimony of the Museum, located at three levels: municipal, state and federal. The curatorial proposal modified the format of the Art Hall. Its purpose has been to meet the needs and expectations of the local and national artistic community, fostering the training of artists at the beginning of their careers. In the 27th National Salon of Art of Belo Horizonte the Pampulha Bag was implanted, inaugurating a program of artistic residence in the MAP. Both the exhibitions and the researches developed during the process are recorded in publications - catalogs and books made available to the public.

In addition to the contemporary art exhibitions and the Bolsa Pampulha project, the MAP hosts a series of activities open to the public that include musical and theatrical shows, seminars, debates, courses and an educational program.