Museum of Art in Lima (MALI), art museum in Lima, Peru, that features the art of Peru from the ancient to the contemporary.
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The Museum of Art in Lima maintains one of Peru’s broadest art collections, featuring work from pre-Columbian times to the present day. The museum’s many rooms are organized thematically, with many of the galleries featuring the crafts of pre-Columbian peoples. The permanent collection includes representative pieces by Peru’s dominant historical cultures, including the Moche, Vicus, Nazca, Chimú, Chancay, and Ica-Chinca. Each exhibit reveals the characteristics distinct to each culture and notes developments in technologies, processes, customs, and art forms, while also tracing a legacy of continuity evident through contemporary works. Historical pieces on display include trophy heads, statues, ceramics, and textiles, as well as decorative and ceremonial objects.
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The museum contrasts these ancient art pieces with rooms devoted to modern and contemporary works. This latter collection begins with the 1940s, a period that ushered in the country’s first modern art, and includes pieces by Peruvian artists working in a number of styles, notably abstract, postmodern, and Pop art, and paintings by such Peruvian masters as Macedonio de la Torre, Francisco Mariotti, and Jorge Eduardo Eielson. The museum holds a number of significant pieces by Fernando de Szyszlo, considered the father of Peru’s abstract movement.