Matching Funds: Argentine art to the world
This year, 2025, marks the 20th anniversary of the Matching Funds program, a purchasing incentive for Argentine art. Each edition, with its private sponsors, raises funds to encourage purchases from institutions around the world. The program must at least double the initial figure.
“Being part of a museum's collection enables research, exhibitions, and circulation; it has a direct market effect, a multiplier effect,” explains Lucrecia Palacios . “And each of the funds applied to the program is multiplied at least tenfold, because each museum comes with its board that makes purchases for its private collections,” she adds.
David Lamelas. "Buenos Aires Doesn't Exist, Buenos Aires Doesn't Exist," 2011, was acquired by the Michigan State University Museum in 2017.
In these virtuous two decades, a podium of Argentine women have come to the world thanks to this program, from Magdalena Jitrik to Fernanda Laguna , and from Marta Minujín to Elba Bairon, among many others.
Sharon Lerner , director of the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), Peru, will revisit arteba this year and is preparing an exhibition at the museum featuring all the works acquired through this program.
The Conquest. Adriana Miranda's series of photographs were presented at the Medellín Museum of Modern Art in 2020, via Rolf Art. From the series "The Conquest" (1991).
In addition to Lerner, the arteba Professionals Program will feature visits from Patricia Hanna of El Espacio 23 - Jorge M. Pérez Collection in Miami, invited by the Ama Amoedo Foundation; Silvia Karman Cubiñá , executive director of The Bass Museum in Miami, among others.
The Program has the support of the National Investment Agency. The Museum Program will bring Manuel Segade from the Reina Sofía Museum to Buenos Aires; Pablo León de la Barra from the Guggenheim Museum in New York; Claudia Segura from the Macba in Barcelona; and Jorge Rivas , Chief Curator of the St. Louis Art Museum in Missouri, United States, who is launching a collection of Latin American art. These are just a few of the international exhibitors already confirmed, who will join national museums and institutions.
Clarin
