The Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, a public institution run by the Ministry of Culture of the Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, was founded in April 1956 on the initiative of Rafael Squirru, its first director. Right from the beginning, it has been an avant garde museum, a genuine house of artists and a space dedicated to promoting the latest work from all the different artistic disciplines. Today, 62 years after it was founded and following its expansion in 2010, every department at the Moderno is being refurbished with a view to the opening of the expanded, complete 11,000m2 building.

Right from the beginning, the Moderno was an avant garde institution that brought together a great variety of work from many different artistic disciplines. The decree that founded the museum stated: The Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires shall be created, run by the Ministry of Culture whose main objective shall be to illustrate objectively and through documentation all the different manifestations of the spirit whose nature falls into said category.