Juan Carlos Castagnino Municipal Museum of Art

[1] Commissioned by the Ortíz Basualdo family of Buenos Aires, the villa on Mar del Plata's Stella Maris Hill was built in 1909 as a summer residence.

Designed by Luis Dubois and Pablo Pater, the eclecticist, the Art Nouveau villa followed a picturesque movement in French architecture common to new, upscale residences in both France and Argentina, at the time (the exterior's half-timber motif, accordingly, was painted on).

The museum gathered a collection of mainly modern art in subsequent decades, and in particular works by local realist painter and muralist Juan Carlos Castagnino.

[3] The donation of the villa by the Ortíz Basualdo family resulted in the museum's relocation, and the institution was re-inaugurated therein on July 9, 1980.

The collection, designed by Belgian architect and cabinetmaker Gustave Serrurier-Bovy, is widely considered among the world's finest of its type, and was incorporated into the museum's exhibits.