Qualla: Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art

Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (WT-shared) Ricardo Rmx, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the state of Rio Grande do Sul created its art museum by decree in 1954, it gave the institution something strange: no home and not a single work of art. It existed only on paper, a name in search of a collection. The man asked to make it real was Ado Malagoli, a Sao Paulo-born painter newly arrived in Porto Alegre to teach, and he did it the hard way - gathering scattered paintings from state offices, traveling to buy more, accepting donation after donation. The museum that grew from that improbable start now holds the largest public art collection in the state. Seventy years later, in May 2024, it nearly lost everything, as two meters of river water rose through its historic halls.

Image: (WT-shared) Ricardo Rmx | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art: A Museum from Nothing

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heloisa medeiros, CC BY-SA 3.0. Malagoli began with almost empty hands. He collected paintings dispersed among state institutions, then used the funds he was given to buy works in Sao Paulo - stars of Brazilian painting alongside some European masters - and to acquire pieces from Rio Grande do Sul's own contemp...

Image: Heloisa medeiros | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art: The Building on the Square

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tetraktys, CC BY-SA 3.0. MARGS occupies one of Porto Alegre's most admired historic buildings, an eclectic pile on the Praca da Alfandega built in 1913 as the headquarters of the federal revenue office. Its design is usually credited to the German-Brazilian architect Theodor Wiederspahn, whose facade scu...

Image: Tetraktys | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art: What Hangs on the Walls

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vasco Prado, CC BY-SA 3.0. The collection has grown to more than 2,600 works spanning nearly every form of visual art, and its heart is the art of Rio Grande do Sul. Here are the gaucho masters: Ibere Camargo, the prodigious printmaker Pedro Weingartner, the sculptor Vasco Prado, Joao Fahrion, Carlos Sclia...

Image: Vasco Prado | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art: Memory Under Water

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ricardo Frantz tetraktys (talk) 19:26, 29 June 2011 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0. Then came the flood. In May 2024 the Guaiba rose to a height the city had never recorded, and water poured into the ground floor of MARGS until it stood two meters deep inside the historic building. Around four thousand items by more than seven hundred artists were touched by the...

Image: Ricardo Frantz tetraktys (talk) 19:26, 29 June 2011 (UTC) | CC BY-SA 3.0