Museo de Arte Antonio Paredes Candia

The Museo de Arte Antonio Paredes Candia is an art museum located in El Alto, the second-largest city in Bolivia and part of the La Paz Department. Inaugurated in 2002, it stands as the most ambitious cultural project of the Bolivian writer Antonio Paredes Candia, housing his personal collection of painting and sculpture alongside his extensive library. The museum serves as a significant cultural institution in a city that, despite its size, has limited major art institutions, preserving and displaying works by prominent Bolivian and international artists while also functioning as a center for contemporary exhibition programming.

The museum opened on 29 May 2002, conceived as the culminating project of Antonio Paredes Candia's career. From its inception, it was designed to preserve and publicly display the writer's personal art collection and bibliographic holdings. The institution has since developed a dual role: safeguarding this original bequest while also hosting temporary exhibitions. In 2013, the museum expanded its contemporary programming when the art collective Public Delivery organized a solo exhibition by Swiss-Bolivian artist Luciano Calderon titled Ciudad Esperanza, demonstrating the museum's continued engagement with current artistic practice beyond its founding collection.

The museum's holdings encompass fine arts, bibliographic materials, and archaeological objects. As of 2011, the collection comprised 503 works of art and 11,931 books, though earlier accounts from around the time of founding cite more than 300 artworks and 11,000 volumes. The fine art collection concentrates on painting and sculpture by contemporary masters, while the library and hemeroteca (newspaper archive) document events from 1950 onward, including the 1952 Revolution and coverage of Che Guevara's guerrilla campaign. Archaeological holdings include pieces from the Mollo and Tiahuanaco cultures, extending the collection's temporal range from pre-Columbian periods to the present.

The painting and sculpture collection features works by Ricardo Pérez Alcalá, Darío Antezana, Gil Imaná, Alfredo La Placa, Marina Núñez del Prado, Cecilio Guzmán de Rojas, Alfredo Domínguez, Arturo Borda, Víctor Zapana, and Gonzalo Condarco, among numerous others. Marina Núñez del Prado was a major Bolivian modernist sculptor, while Cecilio Guzmán de Rojas was a significant painter, lending particular weight to these holdings within Bolivian art history. The archaeological pieces from Mollo and Tiahuanaco cultures represent important pre-Columbian civilizations of the Andean region. The hemeroteca's documentary materials on the 1952 Revolution and Che Guevara's guerrilla activities provide significant historical resources for researchers.

The museum is situated in El Alto, a city that sits on the Altiplano plains above La Paz. Sources do not provide specific architectural details about the building itself. The location in El Alto rather than in the administrative capital La Paz proper marks the museum as a cultural anchor in a rapidly growing urban center that has historically been underserved by major cultural institutions compared to the adjacent capital city.

The Museo de Arte Antonio Paredes Candia is located in El Alto, Bolivia, within the La Paz Department. The museum is accessible to the public as a cultural institution, though specific visiting hours, admission fees, and exact street address are not detailed in available sources. As of 2011, the museum maintained active operations with its holdings of over 500 artworks and nearly 12,000 books available to visitors. The institution continues to function as both a permanent collection display and a venue for temporary exhibitions, as evidenced by the 2013 Luciano Calderon exhibition organized by Public Delivery. The museum's online presence was previously archived through the Wayback Machine, suggesting some digital documentation of its activities exists.