The latest addition to South America’s burgeoning contemporary art scene is almost set for its debut after a two-year-long construction process that will give the continent what is likely to be its first artist-designed museum in the form of the new Museo Arte Contemporaneo Atchugarry (MACA) located on the southern edge of Uruguay’s Atlantic coast. 

The museum is a product of a collaboration between Canada-based Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott and renowned sculptor Pablo Atchugarry. 

Marked by facing curvilinear concrete and timber volumes, the new museum rises from the landscape surrounded by a 99-acre sculpture park creating an ark-like profile that contains works taken from the artist’s personal collection. Ott was instrumental in contributing his signature aesthetic to the design of the museum, which the artist praised as creating a seamless transition between the site and nature. 

“There is a common concern among artists and collectors, which consists in thinking about where their works will go, the fruit of a lifetime, the passion that has always accompanied them. So a few years ago the idea of building a museum was born, right here in the Pablo Atchugarry Foundation, which is in some way the cultural heritage that I leave for Uruguay,” the artist said in a 2020 statement.