MALBA Doubles Collection of Latin American Art with Historic Acquisition
68Dec. 17, 2025
TheMuseo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires(MALBA) on December 15 announced that its founder, real estate developer Eduardo F. Costantini, has purchased the Daros Latinamerica Collection. Formerly residing in Zurich, the trove comprises 1,233 works, most created between the 1950s and the 2010s and encompassing painting, sculpture, photography, video, and large-scale installation. The landmark acquisition signifies the return of major Latin American works to the region from Switzerland and will see works by artists from Costa Rica, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic enter the museum for the first time, alongside works by artists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico. It more than doubles the size of both MALBA’s and Eduardo Costantini’s modern and contemporary Latin American art collection, to roughly 3,000 works, making it one of the world’s largest.
The Daros Collection includes work by 117 artists, seventy-five of whom are new to MALBA’s holdings. Among the acquired works are those by Lygia Clark, Alfredo Jaar, Julio Le Parc, Ana Mendieta, Doris Salcedo— whose emblematic work of the 1990s and early 2000s enters MALBA’s collection for the first time—and Jesús Rafael Soto. Highlights include Hélio Oiticica’sRelevo espacial, 1959; Cildo Meireles’Missão/Missões (Como construir catedrais), 1987; Carlos Cruz-Diez’sFisicromía2, 1959; and Víctor Grippo’sAnalogía I, 1971.
“This acquisition repositions MALBA as the leading contemporary art collection on the continent, a position the museum already occupies in the field of modern art,” said Rodrigo Moura, MALBA’s artistic director, in a statement. “It strengthens our core mission—to serve the public—and reaffirms our commitment to the art of the present and to our growing audiences.”
MALBA opened in 2001 with more than two hundred works from Constantini’s collection. The nonprofit has planned a major expansion that will roughly double its size, to 90,000 square feet, and will feature new exhibition space constructed underneath Plaza Perú, next to the museum. Construction is set to start in fall 2026, following the institution’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations.