I don’t know why I overlooked this gem on the last trip. I went to MALBA, the museum of Modern Art. But not to this one, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.

My expectations were low, Pablo, with whom I went, mentioned that it only had one single van Gogh… it sounded like that was the only reason…

Far from the truth.

The Museum is definitely worth a visit. It houses a number of paintings from all styles, the religious European paintings from the 12 to 15th centuries, Flemish and Dutch masters, French pre-revolution portraits of Madame du X avec son fils le Duc de Y…

Ok, I’m not that into those…

Then however: rooms full with impressionists and modernists, the famous van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Toulouse Lautrec, Renoir, Degas…. a huge collection of sculptures by Rodin…

And, most interestingly, rooms with Argentinian art, that gave a good overview of the developing art scene in Argentina, from propaganda art depicting various battles or campaigns in order to rule the vast lands, to Gauchos, to rising social issues in times of industrialization with its poor and its rich bourgeois industrialists.

And I now know that the close-by Avenida Pueyrredón is names after Prilidiano Pueyrredón, one of Argentinas most famous painters.

I liked seeing these artworks in their local context. If I’d see any of them in a European museum, all by themselves, I would probably not really have noticed them.

Here, in Argentina, they had a context. And my guide Pablo willingly explained me a lot of their history, the reactions or scandals they had provoked at the time.

The museum currently also hosts two other exhibitions, one on sculptures, the other one on an Argentinian Artist called OSKI, who has illustrated a number of books, made one-page short stories or commented on Argentina in the most funny, simple way.