Its objective was initially limited to an arts program revolving primarily around the display of the Di Tella family's private collections, which prominently included works by Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Jackson Pollock.

Growing local interest in Latin American art was accompanied by an initiative to show the Di Tella collection across the Argentine hinterland, for which a minibus was purchased in 1963; the experiment, however, ended the following year, when the vehicle crashed in a rural La Rioja road.

The offices were rented by SIAM Di Tella at the northern end of Florida Street, near Plaza San Martín, a busy pedestrian intersection in the upscale Retiro district that could attract larger audiences.

CAV introduced art patrons to sculptors Juan Carlos Distéfano, Julio Le Parc, and Clorindo Testa, as well as painters Romulo Macció, Luis Felipe Noé, Jorge de la Vega, Ernesto Deira, Antonio Seguí, and conceptual artists such as Edgardo Giménez and Marta Minujín.

Erotic in some aspects, and provocative to conservative local audiences, her early Di Tella Institute events included Eróticos en technicolor and the interactive Revuélquese y viva (Roll Around in Bed and Live).

[3] A turn of historical events in 1966 proved detrimental to the institute, and to freedom of expression, when the civilian administration of President Arturo Illia was deposed on June 28 by the Argentine Armed Forces, and was replaced with the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Juan Carlos Onganía.

[6] A self-styled manzana loca (city block of madness), the center's agenda remained active initially, and this new era was marked by the advent of the "Experience" – a fusion of the more controversial happenings with experimental theatre.

The director, Enrique Oteiza, and two leading board members, Jorge Sábato and Roberto Cortés Conde, resigned, and in May 1970, the famed Florida Street center hosted its last exhibition, a theatrical production by Marilú Marini.

[1] Remembered nostalgically by friends of the arts, and particularly during the "Dirty War" of the late 1970s, when repression of political terrorism quickly extended to dissidents and controversial artists, the institute's absence became an example of the "cultural blackout" described by writer Ernesto Sábato at the time.