The building was designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer at the request of the then-mayor of the city, Juscelino Kubitschek, and is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site along with the rest of the ensemble since 2016.

It is one of the buildings designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer, with structural calculation by the engineer Joaquim Cardoso, around the Lake Pampulha, in the Jardim Atlântico neighborhood in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, at the request of the then-mayor Juscelino Kubitschek in the early 1940s.

[5] The conversion of the casino into an art museum was proposed by the architects from Minas Gerais, Sylvio de Vasconcellos, who became its first director,[6] and Celso Pinheiro, who was its chief conservator until 1965.

Its collection brings together works by various plastic artists such as Oswaldo Goeldi, Fayga Ostrower, and Anna Letycia, works by modernists such as Di Cavalcanti, Livio Abramo, Bruno Giorgi, and Ceschiatti, and by contemporary artists such as Antonio Dias, Frans Krajcberg, Ado Malagoli, Iberê Camargo, Tomie Ohtake, Ivan Serpa, Milton Dacosta, Alfredo Volpi, Franz Weissmann, among others.

In 2016, the Municipal Foundation of Culture announced that in July, the MAP would be closed to begin a major renovation throughout the building, initially expected to last two years with a projected cost of R$4.2 million.