Museum of Contemporary Art of Rosario

The Museum of Contemporary Art of Rosario, commonly abbreviated MACRo, is an annex of the Juan B. Castagnino Fine Arts Museum dedicated to contemporary art. Located in Rosario, the largest city in Argentina's province of Santa Fe, it stands beside the Paraná River at the northern end of Oroño Boulevard on Estanislao López Riverfront Avenue. Opened to the public on November 19, 2004, the museum occupies a repurposed industrial site and has become recognized as holding the most important collection of contemporary Argentine art in the country.

The museum's origins trace to an initiative by the Fundación Antorchas, which agreed to donate 27 works selected by Marcelo Pacheco, then director of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), on the condition that a major collection of Argentine art be formed. The Municipality of Rosario and the Fundación Museo Castagnino, together with businesses and private donors, secured the necessary funding. The project coincided with broader urban renewal along Rosario's central waterfront following the relocation of port activities southward. Among the historic structures in the former port zone, the Davis Silo was selected to house the new museum, which was inaugurated on November 16, 2004. Since 2005, the museum has organized the Semana del Arte de Rosario (SAR), a citywide event featuring interventions and exhibitions in public and private spaces, newspapers, billboards, bus tickets, and urban routes that extends the museum's reach throughout Rosario and neighboring cities.

As of the most recent count, the museum's collection comprises 848 works by 464 artists, collectives, and occasional groups, offering a broad panorama of Argentine art from recent decades. The collection encompasses works by artists associated with the Instituto Di Tella and the Rosario avant-garde of the 1960s, alongside productions by authors who shaped twentieth-century artistic developments in Argentina. The institution emphasizes conservation, documentation, and cataloguing of its heritage, promotion of Rosario-based artists, and acquisition of contemporary works from diverse regions of the country through a dedicated purchasing plan.

The collection includes works by significant Argentine artists such as Lucio Fontana and Antonio Berni, as well as Nicola Costantino, Marcos López, Marta Minujín, Marcelo Pombo, and León Ferrari. It also holds pieces by the collective Tucumán Arde, a pivotal group in Argentine art history. These holdings represent key figures from the Instituto Di Tella era, the 1960s Rosario avant-garde, and subsequent developments in twentieth-century Argentine art.

The museum occupies the former Davis Silos, an abandoned grain silo complex that was part of Rosario's port facilities before their relocation. The building was originally designed by Ermete de Lorenzi (1900-1971), one of Rosario's most important twentieth-century architects. The structure consists of eight large concrete silos, each 7.5 metres in diameter, painted in different colors. The initial phase converted 970 square metres across ten former office floors, plus a corridor crowning the silos at the seventh floor. The museum project was carried out by the Urban Projects Directorate of Rosario's municipal planning department, with priority given to integral preservation of the building, highlighting the unique characteristics of concrete and stressing austerity as a value while keeping the structure visible. A glass elevator on the building's exterior provides views of the river scenery and nearby islands. The museum is climate-controlled and equipped with fire control and security systems meeting international standards for art exhibitions. The exterior painting carries the character of an ephemeral work: every three years a national competition is held to renew it. The first winner was architect Cintia Prieto, selected by a jury including Luis Benedit, Luis Felipe Noé, and Clorindo Testa. Since 2011, the facade has displayed a design by Martín Agüero, awarded 10,000 Argentine pesos, which represents stages and orientation marks through colors and symbols: seasons and moments of the day in color, stages of life in grayscale, and the four cardinal directions in black arrows.

The Museum of Contemporary Art of Rosario is administratively dependent on the Juan B. Castagnino Fine Arts Museum and operates as its contemporary art annex. Its official website is https://castagninomacro.org/. The museum offers virtual tours accessible through its website, allowing remote exploration of its spaces. Located at the intersection of Boulevard Oroño and the Paraná River, the site is positioned within Rosario's redeveloped former port area, now a cultural destination following the city's waterfront transformation.