The museum is closed while undergoing extensive renovations but is set to reopen better than ever in 2010. In the meantime, the museum is holding exhibitions at an annex it opened in San Juan's Plaza Las Américas, and it is lending some of its best pieces out to traveling shows at fine arts institutions throughout the world.
Donated to the people of Puerto Rico by the late Luís A. Ferré, the former governor who founded the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, this museum has the finest collection of European and Latin American art in the Caribbean. The building itself was designed by Edward Durell Stone (who also designed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.) and has been called the "Parthenon of the Caribbean." Its collection represents the principal schools of American and European art of the past 5 centuries. Among the nearly 400 works on display are exceptional pre-Raphaelite and Italian baroque paintings. Visitors will also see artworks by other European masters, as well as Puerto Rican and Latin American paintings, graphics, and sculptures. On display are some of the best works of the two "old masters" of Puerto Rico, Francisco Oller and José Campéche. The museum also contains a representative collection of the works of the old masters of Europe, including Gainsborough, Velázquez, Rubens, and Van Dyck. The museum is best known for its pre-Raphaelite and baroque paintings and sculpture -- not only from Spain, but from Italy and France as well.
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