Museo de Arte Latinoamericano

One of the most important spa resorts in Uruguay will now have its own museum dedicated to Latin American art. In recent days, Pablo Atchugarry, accompanied by Uruguay's Minister of Education and Culture, María Julia Muñoz, the mayor of Maldonado, Enrique Antía, and the director of the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Enrique Aguerre, announced in the auditorium of the Fundación Atchugarry the creation of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano. The building will be raised on land owned by the foundation in Punta del Este, Uruguay, and will occupy 2,000 square meters. The project is expected to be completed in 2020. The museum will be designed by Carlos Ott, one of Uruguay's most prominent architects, in the middle of a Sculptural Garden guarded by the foundation. It will display works by Julio Le Parc, Carlos Cruz Diez, Jesús Soto, and Joaquín Torres García, among others. The architectural design will include two exhibition areas, the upper one will be used to display sculptural works and the other, with a more rectangular layout, will serve as the exhibition space for paintings. About this new project, Carlos Ott said the following: "It began in Paris, sitting on a table before a plate of oysters and accompanied by Pablo and two other people. Pablo ate two dozen, I only had one dozen. There I realized I had a huge project ahead and a good reason to go back to Uruguay. The museum will be like the keel of a boat enclaved on the hill, with wide-open views of the sculptural park, the lagoon, and the sunset. It will have more than 2,000 square meters of exhibition space and a huge overhanging terrace to enjoy a dialog between art and nature." The creation of this mega project by sculptor Atchugarry will involve a huge investment, in addition to his own personal art collection and private donations of works by Latin American kinetic artists and sculptures by Iommi Penalba, Podestá, and 20 artists whose work is part of the collection at the Sculptural Park located on a 25-hectare prairie. To Pablo Atchugarry, "The idea of a museum of Latin American art began three years ago, but became a reality when we met six month ago. I already had great respect for Carlos and his work, which I consider extraordinary and belonging to a great sculptor. And it was really nice to see him arrive at the foundation with his notebook and seeing how the project of the museum went from something he imagined to something concrete that developed naturally, respecting the topography of the place." While the new museum will be under the tutelage of the Fundación Atchugarry, its management will be independent and entail the creation of an entire work team. Construction will begin on April 1 of this year.