The government of the province of Buenos Aires has opened the new Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Mar del Plata (MAR), which since late last year, with an investment of 5.5 million euros and in a 7,000 square-meter facility designed by Estudio Monoblock, has become Argentina's largest and most modern contemporary art museum.
The new space will hold exhibitions from different parts of the country, and alongside contemporary art it will feature other modes of expression. After three years in construction, the museum opened with a group show titled El espíritu Pop, curated by Rodrigo Alonso (Argentina, 1965), as a tribute to Argentine Pop Art.
Among the 140 works on exhibit, by almost 40 artists and coming from public and private collections from Buenos Aires, La Plata and Córdoba, some of the most outstanding that visitors can enjoy through April 20, 2014, are Andy Warhol and El pago de la deuda externa argentina con maíz, by Marta Minujín (Buenos Aires, 1943); Moira Casán, by Edgardo Giménez (Santa Fe, 1942); El Rompecabezas, by Jorge de la Vega (Buenos Aires, 1930-1971); and El retrato de Bergara Leuman, by Martha Pelufo (Buenos Aires, 1931-1979), among others.
For the inauguration, the museum installed a large sea lion built using more than 80,000 fake alfajores (a typical Argentine pastry) by Marta Minujín, as an emblem and icon for the new space.