Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art

Its design is usually attributed to Theodor Wiederspahn, a German-Brazilian architect, although important local historian and artist Fernando Corona ascribes it to Germano Gundlach.

Soon afterwards the state Secretary of Culture, José Mariano de Freitas Beck, invited Ado Malagoli, a renowned painter born in São Paulo who had just arrived in Porto Alegre in order to teach at the Institute of Fine Arts, to lead the organization and establishment of the museum.

The museum finally opened to the public in 1955, installed in the foyer of São Pedro Theatre, showing those first acquisitions, some 120 pieces.

At this time the collection had expanded to comprise over one thousand works, most of them donated, since the state funds ceased to be granted after Malagoli resigned in 1959.

There is also a little but interesting collection of Brazilian art, with pieces by Cândido Portinari, Emiliano di Cavalcanti, Lasar Segall, Arthur Timótheo da Costa, Antônio Parreiras and others, and some nice paintings from European masters of the end of the 19th century.