Best Art in Buenos Aires

Credit: Yadid Levy / Alamy

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Published: August 2014

By Local Expert: Matt Chesterton

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Porteños love looking at pictures—and sculptures and videos and installations… Indeed, BA’s reputation as a predominantly literary city feels increasingly out of date, as more and more people make space in their calendars for art shows and exhibitions. To cite a recent example, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s 2013 MALBA retrospective caused a sensation—and lines that snaked around several blocks. Another welcome trend is the emergence of exhibition spaces in neighborhoods off the beaten art trail. Faena Arts Center in posh Puerto Madero and Usina del Arte in gritty La Boca are contrasting examples of this diffusion of art away from its traditional bastions in Recoleta and Palermo.

I’ve listed five major institutions here, but serious art buffs will want to poke around the independent galleries and pop-up venues which more than anywhere else, set and chart the creative course of the city’s art scene. Right now, nothing is hotter that street art. Look out for it on walls, railway arches, and within the hip confines of Galería UNION.