Museum of Fine Arts

Museum of Fine Arts, museum in Caracas, Venezuela, containing a variety of international and Venezuelan art and artifacts—namely, ancient Egyptian objects, Chinese ceramics, and Cubist pieces. Founded in 1917, the museum was initially housed in the Central University of Venezuela (later the Palace of the Academies), but in 1938 it moved to a Neoclassical-inspired building designed by architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva. The museum underwent several expansions, perhaps most notably in the 1970s, when Villanueva designed a second building, done in the Brutalist style. In 1977 the museum temporarily left the Neoclassical building so that it could be occupied by the Gallery of National Art (Galería de Arte Nacional), one of the few museums in South America founded to show the national cultural identity of a country. Late in the first decade of the 2000s the Gallery of National Art moved into a building by Carlos Gómez de Llerena, allowing the Museum of Fine Arts to occupy both of its buildings once again.