South America · Brazil
São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP)
MASP is the most important art museum in Brazil's biggest city, in a famous red concrete building lifted on two giant beams over an open public square. It holds the best collection of European art in the southern hemisphere.
History of the museum
The newspaper owner Assis Chateaubriand and the Italian art dealer Pietro Maria Bardi founded MASP in 1947 and gathered masterpieces by pressing wealthy Brazilians to donate. Its dramatic building on Paulista Avenue, designed by Lina Bo Bardi, opened in 1968. Its glass easels, which let visitors see paintings floating in the air without walls, became famous.
Top pieces
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Van Gogh, Renoir, Rembrandt European masters, 1900
