MALBA opens new US$10-million museum branch in Escobar

Argentina's top museum of Latin American art has cut the ribbon on a new branch in Buenos Aires Province after a US$10-million investment.

The Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires, more commonly known as MALBA, opened the doors of ‘MALBA Puertos’ in Escobar, around 50 kilometres from the capital, on September 22.

The brainchild of MALBA owner Eduardo Costantini, the new location came to fruition after the prestigious museum needed a new venue for artworks in “technical reserve”  – i.e. works that are not currently being displayed at the main site.

That small concern eventually translated into a three-wing architectural project in the city of Puertos. The new development was overseen by Consultatio, Costantini’s construction firm.

The idea behind Malba Puertos is to approach ideas, federal projects and project outstanding voices from the art scene to new communities, through a programme of exhibitions and cultural activities.

The museum cohabits its new space with the ‘Circuito Público de Arte,’ group of more than 20 site-specific works installed throughout the city of Puertos, in line with the 200-hectare Central Lake and the Natural Reserve over the Luján river.

The museum, with free admission, consists of a series of interior and exterior spaces offering different formats and exposition supports. They include the technical reserve, containing works from the MALBA Collection and the Eduardo F. Costantini Collection, which, for the first time, may be viewed by the public. 

The design of the new museum was left in the hands of architect Juan Herreros, who had also been in charge of the renewal of the MALBA in 2017. 

During a recent press tour, Herreros said that he sought to give shape to Costantini’s preferences. 

“We had to create a closed/open place and its transparency attests to that, we sought to make something porous, diluted into the landscape,” the architect explained.

Eleonora Jaureguiberry, the former Culture & City secretary for the San Isidro municipal government, has been appointed general coordinator of Malba Puertos. Part of her remit is to further the social bond within locals in Puertos and the surrounding areas, as well as creating alliances with civil society organisations and educational centres.

Malba Puertos will be one of the first museums in the world – following in the footsteps of the Boymans Van Beuningen Museum in the Netherlands, and the Louvre, Centre Pompidou and FRAC Collection in France – to open up its reserves to the public, a move which “democratises the archive,” as Costantini put it

In this respect, architect Herreros commented: “A space which is normally invisible and inaccessible for the public in any conventional museum, becomes in this project the motor behind an institution which is quite the opposite: transparent and open.”

Temporary exhibits

Ensayos naturales by the Mondongo duo and Luis Ouvrard
Available from September 22 to March 2, 2025.

Ensayos naturales is divided into two chapters. In the first one, 12 panels of the Argentina (landscapes) picture installation, 2009-2013, by the Mondongo duo (Juliana Laffitte and Manuel Mendanha), alongside with 12 other paintings by Luis Ouvrard (Rosario, 1899-1988) created between 1966 and 1986. 

Works by the Mondongo duo, inspired in the Entre Ríos delta, with largescale pictures of disturbing forests, contrasting with the small scale works by Ouvrard which, with the backdrop of the magical Pampas of Santa Fe, call viewers’ attention over local fruits. 

Starting in December, the same paintings by Mondongo will be accompanied by collages by artist Rosana Schoijett where flowers prevail: another expression of the beauty and richness of the soil, which in turn reveals our need and desire to create small paradises on earth.

La vida que explota by Gabriel Chaile, Claudia Alarcón and Silät
Available from September 22 to March 2, 2025.

La vida que explota offers a dialogue between the set of sculptures of five anthropomorphised beings which Gabriel Chaile presented at the Venice Biennale in 2022 – now displayed permanently at Malba Puertos – and textile works by Wichi artist Claudia Alarcón and the Silät weavers collective.  

The totem structures by Chaile are named after members of his family and are shaped as monumental mud sculptures, artefacts which may also be lit, provide heating and work as ovens to make food.

In dialogue with these sculptures here are presented textile art pieces by Salta artist Claudia Alarcón and the Silät weavers collective, bringing together Wichi women fighting for the defence of the collective memory and creativity of their culture. These artists weave with chaguar –a herbaceous plant with succulent and thorny leaves, typical of Great Chaco and the Wichi culture– with contemporary images and complex geometric assemblies.